Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The standard error of estimates based on EU-SILC. An exploration through the Europe 2020 poverty indicators

Currently, the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) is the single most important data source for cross-national comparative research on income and living conditions in the European Union. As EU-SILC consists of a sample of European households, point estimates should be accompanied by appropriate standard errors and confidence intervals. This is especially so if indicators are constructed for measuring progress towards pre-defined targets such as those of the Europe 2020 strategy. All too often this has been neglected in European poverty research and official publications. In contrast, this paper pays explicit attention to the calculation of standard errors and confidence intervals. Standard errors are strongly dependent on the sample design. Therefore, accurate information on the sample design is crucial, especially for a database like EU-SILC which contains data on about 30 European countries which employ different complex sample designs. However, information on the sample design is incomplete in the EU-SILC User Database for data confidentiality reasons and there are several options for handling this lack of information. In this paper, we document the sample designs used in EU-SILC and compare the information available through different sources, namely the Quality Reports, the User Database and a specific dataset containing additional information about the sample design prepared by Eurostat. Furthermore, on the basis of the specific dataset prepared by Eurostat, we explore which variables are best used when analysing EU-SILC for adequately computing standard errors. We illustrate the importance of various assumptions with regard to the sample design by presenting results for the official Europe 2020 poverty indicators. It is shown that neglecting the sample design can lead to a serious underestimation of the standard errors. In addition, it is discussed how researchers using EU-SILC could best take account of the sample design for appropriately estimating standard errors.
FINANCIAL INTERMEDIARY IN MONETARY ECONOMICS: AN EXCERPT

This is a short literature overview. (1) The literature demonstrates no coherent view on the nature of economic exchange and, in particular, provides no conventionally accepted, fully satisfactory explanation of the real effects of money. Recent developments in macroeconomics suggest a role for financial intermediaries. (2) The economics literature, however, has very little to say about that though the role of intermediaries in economic history has always been emphasised. (3) Further reading suggests that intermediation is largely missing from economics for methodological reasons. Revival of interest in this topic became evident in recent years thanks to developments in the treatment of asymmetric information, thin markets, and dynamics with innovations. (4) Today's literature, however, still primarily addresses empirical and specific issues like particular functions of intermediaries. Analysis of intermediation in the context of general equilibrium, explanation of its role in the monetary transmission and non-neutrality have not been seriously undertaken. Only a few authors so far have put forward their proposals for this perspective.
Multiple Breaks in Lending Rate Pass-Through: A Cross Country Study for the Euro Area

A new approach is proposed for searching multiple unknown breaks, possibly associated with EMU, in the short term business lending rate pass-through. Multiple breaks are detected in five out of nine countries of the euro area. The last break occurs much before the start of EMU for France, several months after that event for Austria, Italy and Germany. Long run pass-throughs decrease (except for France) sizably below one (except for the Netherlands); heterogeneity in the monetary transmission increases across countries. These results raise doubts on claims of a more effective monetary policy under EMU.
Unsupervised Feature Learning from Time Series

In this paper we study the problem of learning discriminative features (segments), often referred to as shapelets [Ye and Keogh, 2009] of time series, from unlabeled time series data. Discovering shapelets for time series classification has been widely studied, where many search-based algorithms are proposed to efficiently scan and select segments from a pool of candidates. However, such types of search-based algorithms may incur high time cost when the segment candidate pool is large. Alternatively, a recent work [Grabocka et al., 2014] uses regression learning to directly learn, instead of searching for, shapelets from time series. Motivated by the above observations, we propose a new Unsupervised Shapelet Learning Model (USLM) to efficiently learn shapelets from unlabeled time series data. The corresponding learning function integrates the strengths of pseudo-class label, spectral analysis, shapelets regularization term and regularized least-squares to auto-learn shapelets, pseudo-class labels and classification boundaries simultaneously. A coordinate descent algorithm is used to iteratively solve the learning function. Experiments show that USLM outperforms search-based algorithms on real-world time series data.
Characterization of the conduction phase of a plasma opening switch using a hydrogen plasma

Plasma opening switch (POS) experiments were conducted on the Hawk generator using an inverse pinch plasma source to inject a hydrogen plasma. Using a combination of interferometry, current measurements, and spectroscopic observations, it is shown that the conduction phase is characterized by the propagation of a current channel through the switch region that pushes a significant fraction of the plasma mass downstream, past the load edge of the switch. The data indicate that the current channel arrives at the load edge of the switch ≈550ns into the 950-ns-long conduction phase, in agreement with calculations based on J×B displacement. Previously published POS experiments, using multispecies plasmas, observed that a relatively small fraction of the injected plasma mass propagated downstream and that the conduction phase ended soon after the current channel reached the load edge of the switch. It is suggested that the observed differences between these two types of switches involves the separation of ionic .
Poverty, risk, and human capital in rural North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan

This paper analyzes the interaction of poverty, risk, and human capital in a descriptive way using micro household data from rural areas in the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. The key emphasis is on the potential of human capital in overcoming two symptoms of poverty—low income and vulnerability to income risk. We have found that, in the sample villages where land per capita is too small both quantitatively and qualitatively, human capital, especially education, plays an important role in overcoming the two symptoms through expanded opportunities of non-farm employment. Another important finding is that lack of mechanisms to cope with income risk is likely to result in low accumulation of human capital. A policy implication of these findings is that public interventions to reduce the cost of income risk such as employment guarantee schemes, provision of primary education and primary health care, may yield large social benefit in the long run. ∗Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186-8603 Japan. Phone: 81-42-580-8363; Fax: 81-42-580-8333; E-mail: kurosaki@ier.hit-u.ac. jp. †Institute of Development Studies, N.W. F.P. Agricultural University, Peshawar, Pakistan. Poverty, Risk, and Human Capital in the Rural North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan
LFTL: A multi-threaded FTL for a Parallel IO Flash Card under Linux

New PCI-e flash cards and SSDs supporting over 100,000 IOPs are now available, with several usecases in the design of a high performance storage system. By using an array of flash chips, arranged in multiple banks, large capacities are achieved. Such multi-banked architecture allow parallel read, write and erase operations. In a raw PCI-e flash card, such parallelism is directly available to the software layer. In addition, the devices have restrictions such as, pages within a block can only be written sequentially. The devices also have larger minimum write sizes (greater than 4KB). Current flash translation layers (FTLs) in Linux are not well suited for such devices due to the high device speeds, architectural restrictions as well as other factors such as high lock contention. We present a FTL for Linux that takes into account the hardware restrictions, that also exploits the parallelism to achieve high speeds. We also consider leveraging the parallelism for garbage collection by scheduling the garbage collection activities on idle banks. We propose and evaluate an adaptive method to vary the amount of garbage collection according to the current I/O load on the device.
TRENDS IN THE INTEREST RATE - INVESTMENT - GDP GROWTH RELATIONSHIP

In the last years it seemed that the Romanian economy leading up to access to the EU was going to enter a new stage, evolving more and more in line with the standard theory. Based on more accurate statistical data for the last years, we try to verify some hypotheses used in the standard economic literature. Also, applying few simple models derived from the standard ones in our experiment we estimated their parameters in the case of Romania in order to obtain an image of the trends in the next period. The two main partial models are referring to the impact of investment on GDP growth rate and to the relation between the interest rate and investment, respectively. Moreover, an equation including inflation dynamics was taken into account. Beginning in 1998, the behaviour of the national economic system and the interest rate - investment - economic growth relationship tend to converge to those demonstrated in a normal market economy and presented in the specialised literature.
Lung emptying in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome: effects of positive end-expiratory pressure

The pattern of lung emptying was studied in 10 mechanically-ventilated patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. At four levels of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) (0, 5, 10 and 15 cmH2O) tracheal (Ptr) and airway pressures (Paw), flow (V′) and volume (V) were continuously recorded. Tidal volume was set between 0.5–0.6 L and V′/V curves during passive expiration were obtained. Expired volume was divided into five equal volume slices and the time constant (τe) and effective deflation compliance (Crseff) of each slice was calculated by regression analysis of V/V′ and postocclusion V/Ptr relationships, respectively. In each slice, the presence or absence of flow limitation was examined by comparing V′/V curves with and without decreasing Paw. For a given slice, total expiratory resistance (Rtot) (consisting of the respiratory system (Rrs), endotracheal tube (Rtube) and ventilator circuit (Rvent)) was calculated as the τe/Crseff ratio. In the absence of flow limitation Rrs was obtained by subtracting Rtube and Rvent from Rtot, while in the presence of flow limitation Rrs equaled Rtot. The τe of the pure respiratory system (τers) was calculated as the product of Rrs and Crseff. At zero PEEP, τers increased significantly towards the end of expiration (52±31%) due to a significant increase in Rrs (46±36%). Application of PEEP significantly decreased Rrs at the end of expiration and resulted in a faster and relatively constant rate of lung emptying. In conclusion, without positive end-expiratory pressure the respiratory system in patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome deflates with a rate that progressively decreases, due to a considerable increase in expiratory resistance at low lung volumes. Application of positive end-expiratory pressure decreases the expiratory resistance, probably by preventing airway closure, and as a result modifies the pattern of lung emptying.
Activity of Neurochemically Heterogeneous Dopaminergic Neurons in the Substantia Nigra during Spontaneous and Driven Changes in Brain State

Dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra (SN) and ventral tegmental area (VTA) are collectively implicated in motor- and reward-related behaviors. However, dopaminergic SN and VTA neurons differ on several functional levels, and dopaminergic SN neurons themselves vary in their intrinsic electrical properties, neurochemical characteristics and connections. This heterogeneity is not only important for normal function; calbindin (CB) expression by some dopaminergic SN neurons has been linked with their increased survival in Parkinson's disease. To test whether the activity of CB-negative and CB-positive dopaminergic SN neurons differs during distinct spontaneous and driven brain states, we recorded single units in anesthetized rats before, during and after aversive somatosensory stimuli. Recorded neurons were juxtacellularly labeled, confirmed to be dopaminergic, and tested for CB immunoreactivity. During cortical slow-wave activity, the firing of most dopaminergic neurons was slow and regular/irregular and unrelated to cortical slow oscillations. During spontaneous cortical activation, dopaminergic SN neurons fired in a more regular manner, with fewer bursts, but did not change their firing rate. Regardless of brain state, CB-negative dopaminergic neurons fired significantly faster than CB-positive dopaminergic neurons. This difference in firing rate was not mirrored by different firing patterns. Most CB-negative and CB-positive dopaminergic neurons did not respond to the aversive stimuli; of those that did respond, most were inhibited. We conclude that CB-negative and CB-positive dopaminergic neurons exhibit different activities in vivo. Furthermore, the firing of dopaminergic SN neurons is brain state-dependent, and, unlike dopaminergic VTA neurons, they are not commonly recruited or inhibited by aversive stimuli.
The Right to Die: A Cross-National Analysis of Agenda Setting and Innovation

Through theories of agenda setting and innovation, the origin, development, and enactment of right-to-die policy in four Western nations—the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and Great Britain—are examined. Different social and government structures produced varied right-to-die politics in each of these countries, although similar issues received more emphasis in Europe. However, it is discovered that policy entrepreneurs, organizations, and governments are important in similar ways in moving the issue from the public to the governmental agenda and to policy innovations in each country. The paper is concluded with a discussion of elements to be included in a model of agenda setting and innovation and with a proposal for the application of theory to a wider range of policies.
Factors associated with fundraising dependency among nonprofit organisations in Australia

Despite the importance of fundraising to the nonprofit sector there has been surprisingly little research on fundraising as a revenue source in Australia. Research that has been conducted both here and internationally has focused on the cost of fundraising - the proportion of fundraising expenses to total fundraising revenue, and fundraising performance - the absolute or relative amount of money raised by organisations via fundraising. This paper examines why some nonprofit organisations are more dependent on fundraising as a source of revenue than others. The paper applies multivariate techniques to examine the influence that three broad sets of factors: organisational; revenue generation model; and fundraising approach, have on what we term 'fundraising dependency' - the percentage of a nonprofit organisation's total revenue that is derived from fundraising activities. It finds that fundraising dependency is associated with a range of organisational characteristics (e.g. size, geographical scope of the organisation and tax status); alternative forms of revenue generation (e.g. reliance on government funding and commercial venturing) and fundraising approach (e.g. whether professional fundraising staff are employed, the use of volunteer fundraisers and the number of fundraising practices used). The results support taking a multidimensional approach to understanding fundraising dependency.
Arrears as a Sign of Financial Repression in Transition Economies - The Case of Romania

This study looks at the signs of financial repression in a transition economy, by evaluating to what extent "perverse financial innovations" resulting from soft budget constraints interfere with monetary developments at the aggregate macroeconomic level. Specifically, the paper investigates to what extent inter-enterprise arrears could act as substitute for transaction money and interfere with the efficiency of restrictive monetary policies, as reflected in money velocity. The particular case of Romania is analysed in two settings: (i) in an ad-hoc econometric investigation on the determinants of M1 and M2 velocity and (ii) in a simple money demand-money supply model which is estimated with and without endogenous inter-enterprise arrears as determinant of money demand. The general conclusion of the research is that, even though it is theoretically possible for overdue trade debt and arrears to interfere with monetary policy effectiveness and reflect upon the evolution of monetary aggregates, this was NOT the case with inter-enterprise arrears in Romania between 1991-1995. The main conclusion for economic policy is that restricting the growth of liquidity and credit in the economy through monetary measures is not enough for hardening budget constraints.
High performance RFID tags for item-level tracing systems

Radio Frequency Identification is a wireless technology that is going to play a very important role as auto-identification solution for many application scenarios, where item-level traceability and high performance are crucial. Currently, some works suggest the use of passive Ultra High Frequency (UHF) tags but, unfortunately, not all the requirements can be met by general-purpose commercial tags in presence of critical operating conditions (e.g. metals and liquids, misalignment between tag and reader antennas, and multiple reading of tags). In this paper, the main features that a Far Field UHF tag should own in order to work properly in the whole supply chain are presented. A tag satisfying all the individuated requirements has been also realized and validated in a controlled test environment able to simulate the pharmaceutical supply chain. Tests have been focused on the above mentioned critical conditions. The performance of the Enhanced tag, in terms of successful read rate, has been compared with those of some commercial Far Field UHF tags. The experimental results are impressive and clearly demonstrate that ad hoc Far Field UHF tags are able to effectively solve many of the performance degradation problems affecting general purpose tags.
Adaptive Minimum BER Reduced-Rank Linear Detection for Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive reduced-rank strategy for very large multiuser multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. The proposed reduced-rank scheme is based on the concept of joint iterative optimization (JIO) of filters according to the minimization of the bit error rate (BER) cost function. The proposed optimization technique adjusts the weights of a projection matrix and a reduced-rank filter jointly. We develop stochastic gradient (SG) algorithms for their adaptive implementation and introduce a novel automatic rank selection method based on the BER criterion. Simulation results for multiuser MIMO systems show that the proposed adaptive algorithms significantly outperform existing schemes.
The impact of selected school factors on the test performance of African-American economically disadvantaged elementary students.

In order for America to retain its superior position in a global economy it is imperative that all students receive educational opportunities that will prepare them for the future. Currently, African-American economically disadvantaged students in the United States perform lower on standardized tests than their grade and age-level peers. Educators must find ways to improve the performance of students in this group in order to maximize future opportunities. Through a mixed-methodology approach, the current study finds three school factors that may positively impact the performance of African-American economically disadvantaged students: high expectations, student-teacher relationships and teacher effectiveness. Quantitative and qualitative analysis provides perspectives from principals primarily from a large urban school district on the impact of these factors on student performance.
The Correlation between Shocks to Output and the Price Level: Evidence from a Multivariate GARCH Model

Previous research indicates that the price-output correlation is time varying. This paper therefore estimates a vector autoregression (VAR) model with a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) error process to obtain quarterly estimates of the price-output correlation for the United States for the period 1876:IV–1999:IV. The estimated correlation is usually positive before 1945 and zero during 1945–1963. Negative correlations become important only after 1963 but do not become obviously more important than zero correlations. Prior to 1945, the estimated correlation typically is positive during both recessions and expansions. After 1945, the estimated correlation remains largely positive during recessions but becomes mainly negative during expansions, suggesting that changes in the sign of the price-output correlation are the result primarily of changes in its sign during expansions.
High Fat Diet-Induced Gut Microbiota Exacerbates Inflammation and Obesity in Mice via the TLR4 Signaling Pathway

Background & Aims While it is widely accepted that obesity is associated with low-grade systemic inflammation, the molecular origin of the inflammation remains unknown. Here, we investigated the effect of endotoxin-induced inflammation via TLR4 signaling pathway at both systemic and intestinal levels in response to a high-fat diet. Methods C57BL/6J and TLR4-deficient C57BL/10ScNJ mice were maintained on a low-fat (10 kcal % fat) diet (LFD) or a high–fat (60 kcal % fat) diet (HFD) for 8 weeks. Results HFD induced macrophage infiltration and inflammation in the adipose tissue, as well as an increase in the circulating proinflammatory cytokines. HFD increased both plasma and fecal endotoxin levels and resulted in dysregulation of the gut microbiota by increasing the Firmicutes to Bacteriodetes ratio. HFD induced the growth of Enterobecteriaceae and the production of endotoxin in vitro. Furthermore, HFD induced colonic inflammation, including the increased expression of proinflammatory cytokines, the induction of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), iNOS, COX-2, and the activation of NF-κB in the colon. HFD reduced the expression of tight junction-associated proteins claudin-1 and occludin in the colon. HFD mice demonstrated higher levels of Akt and FOXO3 phosphorylation in the colon compared to the LFD mice. While the body weight of HFD-fed mice was significantly increased in both TLR4-deficient and wild type mice, the epididymal fat weight and plasma endotoxin level of HFD-fed TLR4-deficient mice were 69% and 18% of HFD-fed wild type mice, respectively. Furthermore, HFD did not increase the proinflammatory cytokine levels in TLR4-deficient mice. Conclusions HFD induces inflammation by increasing endotoxin levels in the intestinal lumen as well as in the plasma by altering the gut microbiota composition and increasing its intestinal permeability through the induction of TLR4, thereby accelerating obesity.