Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Real Option to Delay Annuitization: It's Not Now-or-Never

Asset allocation during the retirement years has not received as much attention as allocation prior to retirement. Within the context of financial planning towards the end of the life-cycle, the economics literature is puzzled over the extremely low levels of voluntary annuitization exhibited amongst the elderly. This phenomenon is inconsistent with a strict interpretation of the Modigliani life-cycle hypothesis. Although many plausible explanations have been suggested to reconcile theory and practice, none seem to contain any rigorous normative financial advice on when and if one should purchase an immediate annuity. This is particularly relevant given the increasing number of Defined Contribution pension plans in the U.S., within which the participants have to manage the risk of outliving their resources, and the corresponding trend away from Defined Benefit plans. In contrast to a classical economic approach - and motivated by the financial derivatives literature - this paper focuses attention on the Real Option embedded in the decision to annuitize. Indeed, a fixed immediate life annuity can be viewed as a project with a positive net-present value when compared to maintaining liquid wealth in non-annuitized assets. However, this project should nevertheless be deferred, since the option to wait and annuitize later has value. This result is driven by the higher possible risk-adjusted returns from alternative asset classes in the early stages of retirement, as well as possible asymmetries in mortality rates between subjective health status and objective annuity pricing. Practically speaking, we estimate that the real option to defer annuitization (RODA) is quite valuable until the mid-70s or mid-80s (depending on one's gender and risk aversion), at which point fixed immediate life annuities become the optimal asset class. Moreover, individuals with a higher risk tolerance and greater health asymmetry are endowed with an even larger option value to wait. However, low-cost variable immediate annuities, which are currently not widely available but which provide complete control over the asset allocation process within an immediate annuity wrapper, greatly reduce the option value to wait and create large welfare gains.
Abnormalities of Neurogenesis in the R6/2 Mouse Model of Huntington's Disease Are Attributable to the In Vivo Microenvironment

Huntington's disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative condition characterized by movement disorders, psychiatric disturbance, and cognitive decline. There are no treatments to halt or reverse the disease. Mammalian neurogenesis persists into adulthood in the subventricular zone (SVZ) and dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus. In 2001, our laboratory published the hypothesis that neurogenesis is impaired in neurodegenerative diseases and that this may contribute to disease progression. Since then, it has been shown that neurogenesis is reduced in the DG of transgenic HD mice but increased in the SVZ of HD patients. We sought to characterize neurogenesis further. We found that, in the DG of the transgenic R6/2 mouse model of HD, newborn cell proliferation and morphology, but not differentiation or survival, was compromised. In R6/2 mice, neurogenesis failed to upregulate in the DG in response to seizures. Basal SVZ neurogenesis was similar between R6/2 mice and their wild-type littermates. There was no difference in the in vitro growth of adult neural precursor cells (NPCs) between genotypes. These results suggest that abnormal neurogenesis in the R6/2 mouse is not attributable to an intrinsic impairment of the NPC itself but is attributable to the environment in which the cell is located.
Changes in the Wage Gap of Gender and Caste Groups in India

We explore the changes in the wage gap of caste and gender groups in India. Traditional Hindu society divided people into social classes based on the caste system. The lowest of the castes have traditionally been economically disadvantaged. Women in India have typically been restricted to the household and their participation in the formal labor market has begun expanding only recently. We explore the changes that these two groups have experienced over the years using a nationally representative dataset.
Quantitative Molecular Detection of 19 Major Pathogens in the Interdental Biofilm of Periodontally Healthy Young Adults

In oral health, the interdental spaces are a real ecological niche for which the body has few or no alternative defenses and where the traditional daily methods for control by disrupting biofilm are not adequate. The interdental spaces are the source of many hypotheses regarding their potential associations with and/or causes of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, degenerative disease, and depression. This PCR study is the first to describe the interdental microbiota in healthy adults aged 18–35 years-old with reference to the Socransky complexes. The complexes tended to reflect microbial succession events in developing dental biofilms. Early colonizers included members of the yellow, green, and purple complexes. The orange complex bacteria generally appear after the early colonizers and include many putative periodontal pathogens, such as Fusobacterium nucleatum. The red complex (Porphyromonas gingivalis, Tannerella forsythia, and Treponema denticola) was considered the climax community and is on the list of putative periodontal pathogens. The 19 major periodontal pathogens tested were expressed at various levels. F. nucleatum was the most abundant species, and the least abundant were Actinomyces viscosus, P. gingivalis, and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. The genome counts for Eikenella corrodens, Campylobacter concisus, Campylobacter rectus, T. denticola, and Tannerella forsythensis increased significantly with subject age. The study highlights the observation that bacteria from the yellow complex (Streptococcus spp., S. mitis), the green complex (E. corrodens, Campylobacter gracilis, Capnocytophaga ochracea, Capnocytophaga sputigena, A. actinomycetemcomitans), the purple complex (Veillonella parvula, Actinomyces odontolyticus) and the blue complex (A. viscosus) are correlated. Concerning the orange complex, F. nucleatum is the most abundant species in interdental biofilm. The red complex, which is recognized as the most important pathogen in adult periodontal disease, represents 8.08% of the 19 bacteria analyzed. P. gingivalis was detected in 19% of healthy subjects and represents 0.02% of the interdental biofilm. T. forsythensis and T. denticola (0.02 and 0.04% of the interdental biofilm) were detected in 93 and 49% of healthy subjects, respectively. The effective presence of periodontal pathogens is a strong indicator of the need to develop new methods for disrupting interdental biofilm in daily oral hygiene.
Moving towards trauma-informed care. A model of research and practice.

Context: Cork Simon Community offers care, accommodation and support for almost 1200 people annually. The current unprecedented housing crisis is pushing people into homelessness and preventing people from leaving homelessness. With increasing demands on resources those who are often the most vulnerable struggle to navigate systems and services and thus consideration of service design and delivery is required in order to maximise a service user’s ability to engage effectively. There is a growing body of research that argues that trauma informed care (TIC) improves outputs for both staff and the people they serve. Aims & Method: The aim of this project is threefold; (a) establish the prevalence of trauma within Cork Simon Community (b) assess Cork Simon Community’s capacity for Trauma Informed Care (c) ascertain the implications of the findings for clinical and non-clinical interventions within homeless settings. This aim was addressed by completing three research studies. Trauma awareness training was also delivered to 120+ staff and data regarding capacity for TIC was collected at 6 training dates. 1. Establish service users’ levels of early childhood trauma (ACE’s) 2. Establish staff/volunteers levels of vicarious trauma (ProQOL) 3. Complete agency trauma informed assessment
Assessing and understanding individual differences in music perception abilities

A common approach for determining musical competence is to rely on information about individuals’ extent of musical training, but relying on musicianship status fails to identify musically untrained individuals with musical skill, as well as those who, despite extensive musical training, may not be as skilled. To counteract this limitation, the working aim of this thesis was to develop a new test battery (The Profile of Music Perception Skills; PROMS) that measures perceptual musical skills across multiple domains: tonal (melody, pitch), qualitative (timbre, tuning), temporal (rhythm, rhythmto- melody, accent, tempo), and dynamic (loudness). The development and validation of the PROMS are presented in studies 1 to 4. Overall, the PROMS has satisfactory psychometric properties for the composite score and fair to good coefficients for the individual subtests. Convergent validity was established with the relevant dimensions of Gordon’s Advanced Measures of Music Audiation and Musical Aptitude Profile (melody, rhythm, tempo), the Musical Ear Test (rhythm), and sample instrumental sounds (timbre). Criterion validity is evidenced by a sizeable relationship between test performance and a composite of various indicators of musical proficiency as well as discriminant validity by a generic auditory discrimination task. The application of the PROMS in examining the structure of music perception mechanism is also presented. In particular, the relationship between music perception skills and non-musical abilities is explored in Study 4. The results suggest that the interrelationships among the various subtests could be accounted for by two higher order factors, sensory and structural music processing; the structural processing skill is related to short-term and working memory. Rhythm perception (rhythm and rhythm-to-melody subtests) also shows significant correlation with general mental ability. An Internet study with the PROMS was conducted to examine whether the findings of controlled studies can be replicated with a more diverse population and uncontrolled environment. Most of the findings of the controlled studies were replicated in the Internet study with several exceptions that are reported in Study 5. A brief version of the full PROMS is proposed as a timeefficient approximation of the full version of the battery.
Program-Based Pollution Control Management: The Indonesian Prokasih Program

In 1989, Indonesia's Minister for Population and the Environment introduced its"Clean River"Program (PROKASIH). The program's purpose is to improve water quality by reducing pollution emmissions. Though participation is not entirely voluntary, compliance with the terms of the agreement signed by the plants is not legally binding. Both total biological oxygen demand (BOD) discharges and pollution intensity from PROKASIH plants fell significantly during the period analyzed. However, plant performance varied widely and the overall improvement was achieved through the efforts of a few plants. The program has identified the plants'willingness to practice pollution control. This should prove useful in the allocation of monitoring resources. It is clear that regulators must establish a system for pollution control that reliably analyzes environmental performance. Regulators must confront such issues as self-reporting, information, inspections, compliance assessment, and others. A program-based approach can bring about reliable compliance management and provide the foundation of a river basin environmental management system.
The RUNX2 transcription factor cooperates with the YES-associated protein, YAP65, to promote cell transformation

The Runt box domain DNA‑binding transcription factors (RUNX) play key roles in hematopoietic, bone, and gastric development. These factors regulate angiogenesis and tumorigenic events, functioning as either activators or repressors of target genes. Although RUNX2 is an essential bone maturation factor, it has also been found to promote transformation in vivo and cell proliferation in vitro, perhaps by associating with specific coactivators or corepressors. Adenoviral‑mediated overexpression of dominant negative RUNX2 or specific reduction of RUNX2 with RNA‑interference inhibits cell proliferation. To determine whether RUNX2 also plays a role in cell transformation, RUNX2 interactions with the coactivator Yes‑associated protein (YAP65) were examined. RUNX2 associated with YAP65 via a proline‑rich segment in the C‑terminal domain (PPPY) and coexpression of RUNX2 and YAP65 significantly increased foci formation and anchorage‑independent growth relative to each factor alone. However, in contrast to wild‑type RUNX2, a mutant RUNX2(P409A), which does not bind YAP65, did not cooperate with YAP65 to promote anchorage‑independent growth. RUNX2 is a strong repressor of the cyclin‑dependent kinase inhibitor p21CIP1, which is known to mediate cell transformation. Overexpression of YAP65 prevented RUNX2‑dependent downregulation of p21CIP1 protein expression while promoting cell transformation. The RUNX2(P409A) mutant retained the ability to bind DNA and repress the p21CIP1 promoter as shown by DNA precipitation and luciferase‑reporter assays, respectively, but was not able to relieve repression of the p21CIP1 promoter. Therefore, these results reveal a novel function of the RUNX2 and YAP65 interaction in oncogenic transformation that may be mediated by modulation of p21CIP1 protein expression.
Autobiographical Memory Conjunction Errors: Factors Influencing Memory Accuracy

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pEg7, a New Xenopus Protein Required for Mitotic Chromosome Condensation in Egg Extracts

We have isolated a cDNA, Eg7, corresponding to a Xenopus maternal mRNA, which is polyadenylated in mature oocytes and deadenylated in early embryos. This maternal mRNA encodes a protein, pEg7, whose expression is strongly increased during oocyte maturation. The tissue and cell expression pattern of pEg7 indicates that this protein is only readily detected in cultured cells and germ cells. Immunolocalization in Xenopus cultured cells indicates that pEg7 concentrates onto chromosomes during mitosis. A similar localization of pEg7 is observed when sperm chromatin is allowed to form mitotic chromosomes in cytostatic factor-arrested egg extracts. Incubating these extracts with antibodies directed against two distinct parts of pEg7 provokes a strong inhibition of the condensation and resolution of mitotic chromosomes. Biochemical experiments show that pEg7 associates with Xenopus chromosome-associated polypeptides C and E, two components of the 13S condensin.
Dynamic Factor GARCH Multivariate Volatility Forecast for a Large Number of Series

We propose a new method for multivariate forecasting which combines the Generalized Dynamic Factor Model (GDFM) and the multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroskedastic (GARCH) model. We assume that the dynamic common factors are conditionally heteroskedastic. The GDFM, applied to a large number of series, captures the multivariate information and disentangles the common and the idiosyncratic part of each series; it also provides a first identification and estimation of the dynamic factors governing the data set. A time-varying correlation GARCH model applied on the estimated dynamic factors finds the parameters governing their covariances' evolution. A method is suggested for estimating and predicting conditional variances and covariances of the original data series. We suggest also a modified version of the Kalman filter as a way to get a more precise estimation of the static and dynamic factors' in-sample levels and covariances in order to achieve better forecasts. Simulation results on different panels with large time and cross sections are presented. Finally, we carry out an empirical application aiming at comparing estimates and predictions of the volatility of financial asset returns. The Dynamic Factor GARCH model outperforms the univariate GARCH.
Northern High-Latitude Heat Budget Decomposition and Transient Warming

AbstractClimate models simulate a wide range of climate changes at high northern latitudes in response to increased CO2. They also have substantial disagreement on projected changes of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). Here, two pairs of closely related climate models are used, with each containing members with large and small AMOC declines to explore the influence of AMOC decline on the high-latitude response to increased CO2. The models with larger AMOC decline have less high-latitude warming and sea ice decline than their small AMOC decline counterpart. By examining differences in the perturbation heat budget of the 40°–90°N region, it is shown that AMOC decline diminishes the warming by weakening poleward ocean heat transport and increasing the ocean heat uptake. The cooling impact of this AMOC-forced surface heat flux perturbation difference is enhanced by shortwave feedback and diminished by longwave feedback and atmospheric heat transport differences. The magnitude of the AMOC.
Dynamical Constraints on the Formation of NGC 4472 and Its Globular Clusters

We present new radial velocities for 87 globular clusters around the elliptical galaxy NGC 4472 and combine these with our previously published data to create a data set of velocities for 144 globular clusters around NGC 4472. We utilize this data set to analyze the kinematics of the NGC 4472 globular cluster system. The new data confirm our previous discovery that the metal-poor clusters have significantly higher velocity dispersion than the metal-rich clusters in NGC 4472. We also find very little or no rotation in the more spatially concentrated metal-rich population, with a resulting upper limit for this population of (v/σ)proj < 0.34 at a 99% confidence level. The very small angular momentum in the metal-rich population requires efficient angular momentum transport during the formation of this population, which is spatially concentrated and chemically enriched. Such angular momentum transfer can be provided by galaxy mergers, but it has not been achieved in other extant models of elliptical galaxy formation that include dark matter halos. We also calculate the velocity dispersion as a function of radius and show that it is consistent with roughly isotropic orbits for the clusters and the mass distribution of NGC 4472 inferred from X-ray observations of the hot gas around the galaxy.
Joint source-channel decoding of motion-information using maximum-a-posteriori

The motion compensation is one of the most important mechanisms in the context of video coding, allowing the efficient coding of temporal information. Video coding standards have been using entropy coding for motion information which is more prone to transmission errors than fixed-length coding. In this paper, we propose a joint source-channel decoding (JSCD) scheme for robustly decoding motion vectors, enabling the traditional usage of motion compensation in noisy channel scenarios while still maintaining a good coding efficiency. At the encoder, motion vectors are simply coded using scalar quantization enabling scalable video coding setups. The decoder then tries to recover corrupted motion vectors by means of a maximum-a-posteriori (MAP) estimation. This scheme works in open-loop mode, not requiring feedback from the decoder, which is equally important for noisy channel environments. Because some of the coding complexity is brought from the encoder to the decoder, this scheme can be employed in nontraditional applications like video streaming from low power mobile peers.
Bayesian Evaluation and Selection Strategies in Portfolio Decision Analysis

Practically all firms pursue goals by selecting a portfolio of courses of action that consume resources. Yet, due to uncertainties such as unforeseen market developments, it may not be possible to know in advance how much value these actions yield. Thus, the selection must be based on uncertain ex ante estimates about the future values of the actions. In this paper we show that the explicit Bayesian modeling of these uncertainties serves to increase both the expected value of the selected portfolio and the expected number of those selected actions that belong to the ex post optimal portfolio. Bayesian modeling is also shown to eliminate the expected negative gap between the true and estimated portfolio value, which is caused not by biased value estimates but by the statistical properties of optimizing under uncertainty. Furthermore, we offer analytic results for the optimal targeting of additional evaluations and show that it often suffices to re-evaluate only a subset of the actions. Finally, we propose a novel project performance measure, which is the probability that the project belongs to the optimal portfolio.
Making reintegration work for youth in northern Uganda Findings from two phases of the Survey of War Affected Youth

New survey data on war-affected youth suggest that past approaches and programs are insufficient to meet the needs of youth newly returning from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) as well as those who have already returned. First, for the majority of returning youth, accelerated education, secondary school support, and livelihoods assistance are most needed, but remain in short supply. Government and NGO programs in these areas are still too small scale, and reinsertion packages provide only partial (and potentially problematic) assistance. Second, for the small but important minority of returnees who return with war injuries or to family discord, educational and economic support is secondary in importance to medical treatment and conflict mediation. Yet almost no specialized assistance is available for these cases.
The Early Clinical Features of Dengue in Adults: Challenges for Early Clinical Diagnosis

Background The emergence of dengue throughout the tropical world is affecting an increasing proportion of adult cases. The clinical features of dengue in different age groups have not been well examined, especially in the context of early clinical diagnosis. Methodology/Principal Findings We structured a prospective study of adults (≥18 years of age) presenting with acute febrile illness within 72 hours from illness onset upon informed consent. Patients were followed up over a 3–4 week period to determine the clinical outcome. A total of 2,129 adults were enrolled in the study, of which 250 (11.7%) had dengue. Differences in the rates of dengue-associated symptoms resulted in high sensitivities when the WHO 1997 or 2009 classification schemes for probable dengue fever were applied to the cohort. However, when the cases were stratified into age groups, fewer older adults reported symptoms such as myalgia, arthralgia, retro-orbital pain and mucosal bleeding, resulting in reduced sensitivity of the WHO classification schemes. On the other hand, the risks of severe dengue and hospitalization were not diminshed in older adults, indicating that this group of patients can benefit from early diagnosis, especially when an antiviral drug becomes available. Our data also suggests that older adults who present with fever and leukopenia should be tested for dengue, even in the absence of other symptoms. Conclusion Early clinical diagnosis based on previously defined symptoms that are associated with dengue, even when used in the schematics of both the WHO 1997 and 2009 classifications, is difficult in older adults.