Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Migration within England and Wales and the Housing Market

Economic conditions exert a strong influence on regional migration. On the one hand, strong labour market conditions, as exemplified by low unemployment rates and high earnings, draw migrants into regions. On the other hand, strong housing market conditions can prevent movement since commuting may often be an alternative to migration. This can be thought of as giving rise to a migration equilibrium where high house prices choke off migration caused by strong labour market conditions. Expected capital gains in housing, however, can offset high levels of house prices, an effect ignored in previous literature. Migration can also be influenced more directly by the availability of housing relative to population without this being mediated through prices. This paper, by Gavin Cameron, John Muellbauer and Anthony Murphy, presents evidence on inter-regional net and gross migration between the regions of England and Wales that is broadly in accord with these expectations.
Writing Consistent Stories based on Structured Multi-Authored Narrative Spaces

Multi-authoring is currently a common practice in the field of contemporary storytelling but producing consistent stories that share a common narrative space when multiple authors are involved is not a trivial task. Inconsistencies, which are not always well-received by readers are sometimes expensive to fix. In this work we attempt to improve the consistency of stories and narrative spaces by introducing a set of rules based on a formal model. Such a model takes into account the reader’s concept of consistency in storytelling, and acts as a framework for building tools to construct stories grounded in a common narrative space with a reinforced sense of consistency. We define a model (the Setting) and deploy it through a tool (CrossTale); both based on previous research, and discuss some user evaluation, with an in-depth analysis of the results and their implications.
Innovation systems as patent networks: The Netherlands, India and nanotech

Abstract Research in the domain of ‘Innovation Studies’ has been claimed to allow for the study of how technology will develop in the future. Some suggest that the National and Sectoral Innovation Systems literature has become bogged down, however, into case studies of how specific institutions affect innovation in a specific country. A useful notion for policy makers in particular, Balzat and Hanusch (2004 Recent trends in the research on national innovation systems Journal of Evolutionary Economics 14(2): 197–210) argued that there is a need for NIS studies to develop complementary and also quantitative methods in order to generate new insights that are comparable across national borders. We use data for patents granted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to map innovation systems. Groupings of patents into primary and secondary classes (co-classification) can be used as relational indicators. Knowledge from one class may be more easily used in another class when a co-classifi cation relation exists. Using social network analysis, we map the co-classification of patents among classes and thus indicate what characterizes an innovation system. A main contribution of this paper is methodological, adding to the repertoire of methods NIS studies use and using information from patents in a different way. Policy makers may also find benefits in the social network analysis of the complete set of patents granted by the WIPO to firms and individuals in a country. Social network analysis indicates what innovation activity occurs in a countries and which fields of technology are likely to give rise to innovative products in the near future. We offer such analysis for the Dutch and Indian Innovation Systems. This social network analysis could also be done for a sector innovation system, and we do so for nanotech to determine empirically the knowledge field relevant for this emerging scientific domain.
Boundary detection based on supervised learning

Detecting the boundaries of objects is a key step in separating foreground objects from the background, which is useful for robotics and computer vision applications, such as object detection, recognition, and tracking. We propose a new method for detecting object boundaries using planar laser scanners (LIDARs) and, optionally, co-registered imagery. We formulate boundary detection as a classification problem, in which we estimate whether a boundary exists in the gap between two consecutive range measurements. Features derived from the LIDAR and imagery are used to train a support vector machine (SVM) classifier to label pairs of range measurements as boundary or non-boundary. We compare this approach to an existing boundary detection algorithm that uses dynamically adjusted thresholds. Experiments show that the new method performs better even when only LIDAR features are used, and additional improvement occurs when image-based features are included, too. The new algorithm performs better on difficult boundary cases, such as obliquely viewed objects.
DNA Variation in the SNAP25 Gene Confers Risk to ADHD and Is Associated with Reduced Expression in Prefrontal Cortex

Background The Coloboma mouse carries a ∼2 cM deletion encompassing the SNAP25 gene and has a hyperactive phenotype similar to that of ADHD. Such mice are 3 fold more active compared to their control littermates. Genetic association studies support a role for allelic variants of the human SNAP25 gene in predisposing to ADHD. Methods/Principal Findings We performed association analysis across the SNAP25 gene in 1,107 individuals (339 ADHD trios). To assess the functional relevance of the SNAP25-ADHD associated allele, we performed quantitative PCR on post-mortem tissue derived from the inferior frontal gyrus of 89 unaffected adults. Significant associations with the A allele of SNP rs362990 (χ2 = 10, p-corrected = 0.019, OR = 1.5) and three marker haplotypes (rs6108461, rs362990 and rs362998) were observed. Furthermore, a significant additive decrease in the expression of the SNAP25 transcript as a function of the risk allele was also observed. This effect was detected at the haplotype level, where increasing copies of the ADHD-associated haplotype reduced the expression of the transcript. Conclusions Our data show that DNA variation at SNAP25 confers risk to ADHD and reduces the expression of the transcript in a region of the brain that is critical for the regulation of attention and inhibition.
Driven and Decaying Turbulence Simulations of Low-Mass Star Formation: From Clumps to Cores to Protostars

Molecular clouds are observed to be turbulent, but the origin of this turbulence is not well understood. As a result, there are two different approaches to simulating molecular clouds, one in which the turbulence is allowed to decay after it is initialized, and one in which it is driven. We use the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code, Orion, to perform high-resolution simulations of molecular cloud cores and protostars in environments with both driven and decaying turbulence. We include self-gravity, use a barotropic equation of state, and represent regions exceeding the maximum grid resolution with sink particles. We analyze the properties of bound cores such as size, shape, line width, and rotational energy, and we find reasonable agreement with observation. At high resolution the different rates of core accretion in the two cases have a significant effect on protostellar system development. Clumps forming in a decaying turbulence environment produce high-multiplicity protostellar systems with Toomre Q unstable disks that exhibit characteristics of the competitive accretion model for star formation. In contrast, cores forming in the context of continuously driven turbulence and virial equilibrium form smaller protostellar systems with fewer low-mass members. Our simulations of driven and decaying turbulence show some statistically significant differences, particularly in the production of brown dwarfs and core rotation, but the uncertainties are large enough that we are not able to conclude whether observations favor one or the other.
Thyroid nodules: risk stratification for malignancy with ultrasound and guided biopsy

Abstract Replacing palpating fingers with an ultrasound (US) probe has resulted in an epidemic of thyroid nodules. Despite the high prevalence of thyroid nodules in the general population, thyroid malignancy is rare. Although no imaging modality can accurately predict the nature of every nodule, high-resolution US is the most sensitive, easily available and cost-effective diagnostic test available to detect thyroid nodules, measure their dimensions and identify their structure. The presence of calcifications, irregular spiculated outline, hypoechogenicity in a solid nodule, chaotic intranodular vascularity and an elongated shape are well-known US features of malignancy in thyroid nodules. Cervical lymph node metastasis and extrathyroidal extension of a thyroid nodule are highly specific for malignancy but seen infrequently. Spongiform nodules, purely or predominantly cystic nodules, nodules with well-defined hypoechoic halo and echogenic as well as isoechoic nodules are usually benign. None of the US characteristics have 100% accuracy in detecting or excluding malignancy. Fine-needle biopsy is currently the best triage test for pre-operative evaluation of a thyroid nodule. There is no significant difference in the risk for malignancy between palpable and non-palpable nodules and size is not a reliable indicator for their malignant potential. The best tool for risk stratification for malignancy in thyroid nodules is US and guided biopsy of nodules with suspicious imaging features. This is especially relevant in patients with multinodular goitre.
Victimization and suicide ideation in the TRAILS study: specific vulnerabilities of victims.

BACKGROUND Scientific studies have provided some support for a link between being a victim of bullying and suicide ideation. We examine whether (1) parental psychopathology and (2) feelings of rejection (at home and at school) exacerbate vulnerability to suicide ideation in victims of bullying (pure victims and bully-victims). METHOD Data were from a population-based cohort study of Dutch children (n = 1526, mean age = 12.29 years). Using peer nominations, three groups were established: (1) victim only; (2) bully-victims (children who are victims and who also bully others); (3) uninvolved. Self-report data on suicide ideation were obtained using two items from the Youth Self-Report (Achenbach, 1991). Parental internalizing and externalizing disorders were assessed, as were self-reported feelings of rejection at home and social well-being among classmates. RESULTS The association between victimization and suicide ideation was moderated by parental internalizing disorders (but not externalizing disorders) and feelings of rejection at home. Victims (but not bully-victims) with parents with internalizing disorders reported elevated levels of suicide ideation compared to children uninvolved in bullying. Victims feeling more rejected at home also reported more suicide ideation. There were no overall sex differences in suicide ideation. Surprisingly, bully-victims did not report higher levels of suicide ideation compared to children uninvolved in bullying. CONCLUSIONS Parental internalizing disorders and feelings of rejection at home confer a specific vulnerability for suicide ideation among victims of bullying.
Robust still image coding using lapped transforms with block classification

Very efficient still image compression methods exist today, but most of them are not fit for transmission on error prone channels. One example of state-of-the-art robust image coding is the use of wavelet compression followed by forward error correction, as proposed by P.G. Sherwood and K. Zeger (see Proc. IEEE Data Compress. Conf, p.72-81, 1997); that method gives high coding efficiency but suffers from the incomplete decoding problem. An alternative to this is the joint source/channel coding scheme by Qing Chen and T.R. Fischer (see IEEE Trans. on Img. Proc., vol.7, no.4, p.496-505, 1998), which overcomes this difficulty at the expense of a lower PSNR performance. We propose a joint source/channel coding scheme with increased coding efficiency based on lapped transforms with block classification. With an efficient bit allocation strategy and the high coding gain of lapped transforms, a significant increase, of the order of 2 dB, in the PSNR versus BER performance has been obtained over the classical joint source/channel scheme on binary symmetric channels.
A Spatio-Temporal Mixture Model for Point Processes with Application to Ambulance Demand

We introduce a parsimonious Bayesian approach for modeling spatio-temporal point processes. We model a time series of spatial densities by finite mixture models. The mixture component distributions are assumed common to all time periods while the mixture weights evolve over time. This allows efficient estimation of the underlying spatial structure, yet enough flexibility to capture dynamics over time. We include several extensions to this model. First, we introduce constraints on the mixture weights to capture temporal patterns such as diurnal cycles and seasonality. Second, location-specific temporal dynamics are modeled by applying a separate autoregressive prior on each mixture weight. While estimation may be performed using a fixed number of mixture components, we also extend to estimate the number of components using birth-and-death Markov chain Monte Carlo. Finally, we tailor the estimation to a specific spatial boundary. To illustrate the proposed models, and highlight the impact and utility of each extension, we estimate spatio-temporal ambulance demand in Toronto, Canada at fine time and location scales; such estimates are critical for fleet management and deployment. Our method effectively and efficiently captures the complex spatial and temporal patterns, dynamics and interactions present in this large-scale dataset. We define out-of-sample performance measures to quantify empirical improvements over commonly used nonparametric methods.
An updated Gamma Ray Bursts Hubble diagram

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have recently attracted much attention as a possible way to extend the Hubble diagram (HD) to very high redshift. To this aim, the luminosity (or isotropic-emitted energy) of a GRB at redshift z must be evaluated from a correlation with a distance-independent quantity so that one can then solve for the luminosity distance d L (z) and hence the distance modulus μ(z). Averaging over five different two-parameter correlations and using a fiducial cosmological model to calibrate them, Schaefer has compiled a sample of 69 GRBs with measured μ(z) which has since then been widely used to constrain cosmological parameters. Here, we update this sample through many aspects. First, we add a recently found correlation to the X-ray afterglow and use a Bayesian-inspired fitting method to calibrate the different GRB correlations known so far by assuming a fiducial A cold dark matter model in agreement with the recent Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe5 data. Averaging over six correlations, we end up with a new GRB HD comprising 83 objects. We also extensively explore the impact of varying the fiducial cosmological model considering how the estimated μ(z) change as a function of the (Ω M , w 0 , w a ) parameters of the Chevallier- Polarski-Linder phenomenological dark energy equation of state. In order to avoid the need of assuming an a priori cosmological model, we present a new calibration procedure based on a model-independent local regression estimate of μ(z) using the Union Type Ia Supernovae sample to calibrate the GRBs correlations. This finally gives us a GRB HD made out of 69 GRBs whose estimated distance modulus μ(z) is almost independent of the underlying cosmological model.
The Distribution of Metallicity in the Intergalactic Medium at z ~ 2.5: O VI and C IV Absorption in the Spectra of Seven QSOs

We present a direct measurement of the metallicity distribution function for the high-redshift intergalactic medium (IGM). We determine the shape of this function using survival statistics, which incorporate both detections and nondetections of O VI and C IV absorption, associated with H I lines in high-resolution quasar spectra. The O VI sample (taken from seven QSOs at zabs ~ 2.5) contains lines with N ≥ 1013.6, encompassing ~50% of all baryons at z ~ 2.5. Our survey accounts for ≈98.8% of the C IV mass and ≈90% of the O VI mass in the universe at this epoch. We find a median intergalactic abundance of [O,C/H] = -2.82; the differential abundance distribution is approximately lognormal with mean ≈ -2.85 and σ = 0.75 dex. We discuss the sensitivity of these results to the assumed form of the ionizing UV radiation field. Some ~60%-70% of lines in the Lyα forest are enriched to observable levels of [O,C/H] ≳ -3.5, while the remaining ~30% of the lines have even lower abundances. Thus we have not detected a universal metallicity floor, as has been suggested for some Population III enrichment scenarios. In fact, we argue that the bulk of the intergalactic metals formed later than the first stars that are thought to have triggered reionization. We do not observe a strong trend of decreasing metallicity toward the lower density IGM, at least within regions that would be characterized as filaments in numerical simulations. However, an [O/H] enhancement may be present at somewhat high densities. We estimate that roughly half of all baryons at these redshifts have been enriched to [O,C/H] ≳ -3.5. Using a simple "closed box" model for the metallicity evolution of the IGM, we estimate the chemical yield of galaxies formed prior to z ~ 2.5, finding that the typical galaxy recycled 0.1%-0.4% of its mass back into the IGM as heavy elements in the first 3 Gyr after the big bang.
An Improved Active Noise Control Algorithm Without Secondary Path Identification Based on the Frequency-Domain Subband Architecture

Common active noise control (ANC) algorithms need to identify the secondary path transfer functions between the output of the adaptive control filters and the error sensors, and then use the information to guide the direction of control filter coefficient updating. Recently, Zhou et al. proposed an ANC algorithm without secondary path identification, and we improve their algorithm in this paper. For single-tone and narrowband noise control, the direction of control filter coefficient updating has four choices 180deg, 0deg, and plusmn90deg. We test the four update directions and select the one that works the best. If for all four update directions, the system converges slowly or diverges, we adjust the step size and test again with the new step size. The multitone and broadband noise control problems are converted into several single-tone and narrowband noise control problems by means of a frequency-domain delayless subband architecture. Compared to Zhou's algorithm, our proposed method yields good performance and converges quickly. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm.
Long-Lived Antibody and B Cell Memory Responses to the Human Malaria Parasites, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax

Antibodies constitute a critical component of the naturally acquired immunity that develops following frequent exposure to malaria. However, specific antibody titres have been reported to decline rapidly in the absence of reinfection, supporting the widely perceived notion that malaria infections fail to induce durable immunological memory responses. Currently, direct evidence for the presence or absence of immune memory to malaria is limited. In this study, we analysed the longevity of both antibody and B cell memory responses to malaria antigens among individuals who were living in an area of extremely low malaria transmission in northern Thailand, and who were known either to be malaria naïve or to have had a documented clinical attack of P. falciparum and/or P. vivax in the past 6 years. We found that exposure to malaria results in the generation of relatively avid antigen-specific antibodies and the establishment of populations of antigen-specific memory B cells in a significant proportion of malaria-exposed individuals. Both antibody and memory B cell responses to malaria antigens were stably maintained over time in the absence of reinfection. In a number of cases where antigen-specific antibodies were not detected in plasma, stable frequencies of antigen-specific memory B cells were nonetheless observed, suggesting that circulating memory B cells may be maintained independently of long-lived plasma cells. We conclude that infrequent malaria infections are capable of inducing long-lived antibody and memory B cell responses.
The Halo Mass Function Redshift Dependence

It has recently been shown that the correct halo mass function high-mass behavior may be obtained by an appropriate treatment of the all-mass-at-center problem. Here we show that the treatment of this problem leads to an accumulated mass fraction, F, that is not a universal function of the linear variance of the density contrast but depends on the shape of the power spectrum. For relevant power spectra, F is a universal function of two quantities: the linear variance and a quantity related to the local shape (at the given mass scale) of the power spectrum. This implies, for a given shape of the power spectrum, a redshift dependence of the mass function, which is quite important for a cold dark matter power spectrum. Our results are in good agreement with numerical simulations.
Evidence of a DHA Signature in the Lipidome and Metabolome of Human Hepatocytes

Cell supplementation with bioactive molecules often causes a perturbation in the whole intracellular environment. Omics techniques can be applied for the assessment of this perturbation. In this study, the overall effect of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation on cultured human hepatocyte lipidome and metabolome has been investigated using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in combination with traditional techniques. The effect of two additional bioactives sharing with DHA the lipid-lowering effect—propionic acid (PRO) and protocatechuic acid (PCA)—has also been evaluated in the context of possible synergism. NMR analysis of the cell lipid extracts showed that DHA supplementation, alone or in combination with PCA or PRO, strongly altered the cell lipid profile. The perfect discrimination between cells receiving DHA (alone or in combination) and the other cells reinforced the idea of a global rearrangement of the lipid environment induced by DHA. Notably, gas chromatography and fluorimetric analyses confirmed the strong discrimination obtained by NMR. The DHA signature was evidenced not only in the cell lipidome, but also in the metabolome. Results reported herein indicate that NMR, combined with other techniques, represents a fundamental approach to studying the effect of bioactive supplementation, particularly in the case of molecules with a broad spectrum of mechanisms of action.