Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The CLASS act and long-term care policy : the politics of long-term care financing reform in the United States

This thesis seeks to contribute to the knowledge base about social policy in the United States, using long-term care (LTC) financing policy reform as an illustrative example. Specifically, this thesis explores LTC financing reform efforts during three U.S. Presidential administrations: Bill Clinton (1993-2001), George W. Bush (2001-2009), and Barack Obama (2009-2010). Within this historical framework, the LTC provisions of the Health Security Act of 1993, the development of the Community Living Assistant Services and Supports or 'CLASS' Act during the Bush Administration, and the legislative success of the CLASS Act as a part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 provide comparable cases to compare the drivers of social policy. Drawing on the explanatory frameworks of the welfare state such as ideology, historical institutionalism, and an actor-centered approach to policy analysis, this thesis argues that successful path-departing legislation is difficult to achieve due, in part, to the presumed high costs of social programs and the complex institutional framework of the American political system. Policy outcomes result from the interaction between the complex processes and dynamics of the political system through which policy change (or the failure to change) actually occurs. The fact that the CLASS Act was politically successful, yet administratively inoperable as designed, reinforces the argument that social policy outcomes in the United States are reflective of a complex, enduring struggle of competing ideologies. This continual struggle, coupled with a heightened concern over cost control and fiscal austerity, helps to ensure that policies which are legislatively successful within the institutional architecture of the American political system are unlikely to produce major expansions of the welfare state. Social change is therefore highly difficult to achieve, even in the face of significant unmet social needs. Comprehensive reform of U.S. LTC financing arrangements will remain an elusive goal for the foreseeable future. Instead, incremental, highly pro-market solutions are likely to be the types of policies promoted in the years of ahead.
Channel Feedback Based on AoD-Adaptive Subspace Codebook in FDD Massive MIMO Systems

Channel feedback is essential in frequency division duplexing (FDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Unfortunately, prior work on multiuser MIMO has shown that the feedback overhead scales linearly with the number of base station (BS) antennas, which is large in massive MIMO systems. To reduce the feedback overhead, we propose an angle-of-departure (AoD) adaptive subspace codebook for channel feedback in FDD massive MIMO systems. Our key insight is to leverage the observation that path AoDs vary more slowly than the path gains. Within the angle coherence time, by utilizing the constant AoD information, the proposed AoD-adaptive subspace codebook is able to quantize the channel vector in a more accurate way. From the performance analysis, we show that the feedback overhead of the proposed codebook only scales linearly with a small number of dominant (path) AoDs instead of the large number of BS antennas. Moreover, we compare the proposed quantized feedback technique using the AoD-adaptive subspace codebook with a comparable analog feedback method. Extensive simulations show that the proposed AoD-adaptive subspace codebook achieves good channel feedback quality, while requiring low overhead.
3′ Nontranslated RNA Signals Required for Replication of Hepatitis C Virus RNA

ABSTRACT We describe a mutational analysis of the 3′ nontranslated RNA (3′NTR) signals required for replication of subgenomic hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNAs. A series of deletion mutants was constructed within the background of an HCV-N replicon that induces the expression of secreted alkaline phosphatase in order to examine the requirements for each of the three domains comprising the 3′NTR, namely, the highly conserved 3′ terminal 98-nucleotide (nt) segment (3′X), an upstream poly(U)-poly(UC) [poly(U/UC)] tract, and the variable region (VR) located at the 5′ end of the 3′NTR. Each of these domains was found to contribute to efficient replication of the viral RNA in transiently transfected hepatoma cells. Replication was not detected when any of the three putative stem-loop structures within the 3′X region were deleted. Similarly, complete deletion of the poly(U/UC) tract abolished replication. Replacement of a minimum of 50 to 62 nt of poly(U/UC) sequence was required for detectable RNA replication when the native sequence was restored in a stepwise fashion from its 3′ end. Lengthier poly(U/UC) sequences, and possibly pure homopolymeric poly(U) tracts, were associated with more efficient RNA amplification. Finally, while multiple deletion mutations were tolerated within VR, each led to a partial loss of replication capacity. The impaired replication capacity of the deletion mutants could not be explained by reduced translational activity or by decreased stability of the RNA, suggesting that each of these mutations may impair recognition of the RNA by the viral replicase during an early step in negative-strand RNA synthesis. The results indicate that the 3′-most 150 nt of the HCV-N genome [the 3′X region and the 3′ 52 nt of the poly(U/UC) tract] contain RNA signals that are essential for replication, while the remainder of the 3′NTR plays a facilitating role in replication but is not absolutely required.
Relationship between balance and physical activity measured by an activity monitor in elderly COPD patients

Background Little is known regarding the relationship between balance impairments and physical activity in COPD. There has been no study investigating the relationship between balance and objectively measured physical activity. Here we investigated the association between balance and physical activity measured by an activity monitor in elderly COPD patients. Materials and methods Twenty-two outpatients with COPD (mean age, 72±7 years; forced expiratory volume in 1 second, 53%±21% predicted) and 13 age-matched healthy control subjects (mean age, 72±6 years) participated in the study. We assessed all 35 subjects’ balance (one-leg standing test [OLST] times, Short Physical Performance Battery total scores, standing balance test scores, 4 m gait speed, and five-times sit-to-stand test [5STST]) and physical activity (daily steps and time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day [MV-PA]). Possible confounders were assessed in the COPD group. The between-group differences in balance test scores and physical activity were analyzed. A correlation analysis and multivariate regression analysis were conducted in the COPD group. Results The COPD patients exhibited significant reductions in OLST times (P=0.033), Short Physical Performance Battery scores (P=0.013), 4 m gait speed (P<0.001), five-times sit-to-stand times (P=0.002), daily steps (P=0.003), and MV-PA (P=0.022) compared to the controls; the exception was the standing balance test scores. The correlation and multivariate regression analyses revealed significant independent associations between OLST times and daily steps (P<0.001) and between OLST times and MV-PA (P=0.014) in the COPD group after adjusting for possible confounding factors. Conclusion Impairments in balance and reductions in physical activity were observed in the COPD group. Deficits in balance are independently associated with physical inactivity.
The relationship between working capital efficiency and profitability

Working Capital Management has its effect on liquidity as well on profitability of the firm. In this paper a sample of the 16 Indian firms, listed on BSE including firms from different sectors of our economy for a period which extends to five years starting from 2006 to 2011 has been taken. An attempt has been made to examine the effect of different variables of working capital management including the Debt ratio, Average collection period, Inventory turnover in days, Average payment period, Cash conversion cycle and Current ratio on the Net operating profitability of sample firms. Descriptive and Regression are used for analysis. The results show that there is a strong negative relationship between variables of the working capital management and profitability of the firm except the sales (Size of the company). We also find that there is a positive relationship between size of the firm and its profitability. There is also a significant negative relationship between debt used by the firm and its profitability.
Underreaction to Self-Selected News Events: The Case of Stock Splits

An emerging literature looking at self-selected, corporate news events concludes that markets appear to underreact to news. Recent theoretical articles have explored why or how underreaction might occur. However, the notion of underreaction is contentious. We revisit this issue by focusing on one of the most simple of corporate transactions, the stock split. Prior studies that report abnormal return drifts subsequent to splits do not appear to be spurious, nor a consequence of misspecified benchmarks. Using recent cases, we report a drift of 9% in the year following a split announcement. We consider fundamental operating performance as a source of the underreaction and find that splitting firms have an unusually low propensity to experience a contraction in future earnings. Further, analysts' earnings forecasts are comparatively low at the time of the split announcement and revise sluggishly over time. Together these results are consistent with the notion of market underreaction to the information in corporate news events. Copyright 2002, Oxford University Press.
DEMAND FOR UNLIMITED USE TRANSIT PASSES

This paper attempts to identify the factors which lead an individual user to buy a pass, so as to provide information for operators assessing advantages and disadvantages of introducing or continuing a transit pass. The first part of the paper develops some of the microeconomic reasons for individual demand for transit passes. The model developed not only provides the basis for a subsequent empirical analysis, but in itself suggests that a transit property is likely to increase ridership but reduce revenue through issuance of transit passes. The second part of the paper presents an econometric model of individual choice on purchase of a pass. (TRRL)
Aggregate Production Functions and Types of Technical Progress: A Statistical Analysis

The problem of estimating the rate and type of technical progress continues to be a major concern to economists. One of the difficulties encountered is that of accurate specification both of the aggregate production function and of the type of technical progress. There are different specifications of the production function and there are different assumptions regarding the way technological advance changes the production function. In recent work the type of production function most commonly applied is the CES function. We refer specifically to the works of Arrow, et al. [1], David, et al. [3], Domar [5], Dhrymes [6], Kendrick and Sato [8], and Jorgenson and Griliches [7]. With regard to technology, exogenous or endogenous forms may be assumed. In the exogenous case which we wish to examine in this paper, it has been customary for reasons of theoretical and technical convenience to assume "neutrality" usually in the sense of Hicks or Harrod. However, as we have shown in a theoretical paper on this subject, a number of other types of "neutrality" are possible and plausible (Sato and Beckmann [10]). By "neutrality" we mean the neutrality of the effects of technical change, that is to say, relationships between certain economic variables are invariant under technical change [10, p. 57]. A further complication arises from the fact that these problems of specification of the form of a production function and the form of technical progress are not independent, for some forms of a production function necessarily preclude some types of technical progress. For other types of production functions certain distinctions do not arise. Consider, for example, the case of a production function of the Cobb-Douglas type. Technological change can shift the production function in any of a variety of ways, including changing the coefficients of labor and capital. But if technical change is not to change these coefficients, the change must "enter multiplicatively" and thus be either Hicks-neutral or Harrod-neutral (or their combination-factor-augmenting technical progress), but there is no way of distinguishing the two types. In other cases shown below, the choice of a specific form of a production function necessarily excludes certain types of technical progress. But the main point is that, in picking the type of technical progress, there is no reason to concentrate solely on the standard (Hicks and Harrod) forms of neutral technical progress. There are many other meaningful types of "neutral" technical progress. In our article [10] already referred to we have systematically studied the problems mentioned above from a theoretical point of view. The paper discusses the close connection between the form of a production function in general and the type of technical progress of exogenous type, that would be consistent with a * The authors are both professors of economics at Brown University. They wish to acknowledge the assistance of Diplomvolkswirt Lothar Weinert in performing the regressions. This work was in part supported by the National Science Foundation.
Essays on liquidity and information

This dissertation studies the interaction of liquidity and incomplete or asymmetric information. In Chapter 1, I study a dynamic economy with illiquidity due to adverse selection in financial markets. Investment is undertaken by borrowing-constrained entrepreneurs. They sell their past projects to finance new ones, but asymmetric information about project quality creates a lemons problem. The magnitude of this friction responds to aggregate shocks, amplifying the responses of asset prices and investment. Indeed, negative shocks can lead to a complete shutdown in financial markets. I then introduce learning from past transactions. This makes the degree of informational asymmetry endogenous and makes the liquidity of assets depend on the experience of market participants. Market downturns lead to less learning, worsening the future adverse selection problem. As a result, transitory shocks can create highly persistent responses in investment and output. In Chapter 2, I study why firms can choose to be illiquid. Optimal incentive schemes for managers may involve liquidating a firm following bad news. Fragile financial structures, vulnerable to runs, have been proposed as a way to implement these schemes despite their ex-post inefficiency. I show that in general these arrangements result in multiple equilibria and, even allowing arbitrary equilibrium selection, they do not necessarily replicate optimal allocations. However, if output follows a continuous distribution and creditors receive sufficiently precise individual early signals, then there exists a fragile financial structure such that global games techniques select a unique equilibrium which reproduces the optimal allocation. In Chapter 3, I study speculative attacks against illiquid firms. When faced with a speculative attack, banks and governments often hesitate, attempting to withstand the attack but giving up after some time, suggesting they have some ex-ante uncertainty about the magnitude of the attack they will face. I model that uncertainty as arising from incomplete information about speculators' payoffs and find conditions such that unsuccessful partial defences are possible equilibrium outcomes. There exist priors over the distribution of speculators' payoffs that can justify any possible partial defence strategy. With Normal uncertainty, partial resistance is more likely when there is more aggregate uncertainty regarding agents' payoffs and less heterogeneity among them. Thesis Supervisor: Ivan Werning Title: Professor of Economics Thesis Supervisor: Ricardo Caballero Title: Ford International Professor of Economics
A secure PLAN

Active networks, being programmable, promise greater flexibility than current networks. Programmability, however, may introduce safety and security risks. This correspondence describes the design and implementation of a security architecture for the active network PLANet. Security is obtained with a two-level architecture that combines a functionally restricted packet language, PLAN, with an environment of general-purpose service routines governed by trust management. In particular, a technique is used which expands or contracts a packet's service environment based on its level of privilege, termed namespace-based security. The design and implementation of an active-network firewall and virtual private network is used as an application of the security architecture. Measurements of the system show that the addition of the firewall imposes an approximately 34% latency overhead and as little as a 6.7% space overhead to incoming packets.
The Leadership Game – Experiencing Dynamic Complexity under Deep Uncertainty

In this ever more complex, interconnected, and uncertain world, leadership is needed more than ever. But the literature and most leaders largely ignore dynamic complexity and deep uncertainty: only futures characterized by ever faster change, ever more (required) flexibility, and ever more scarcity (especially in terms of highly qualified human resources) are taken into account. Plausible consequences of dynamic complexities and deep uncertainties are ignored and robustness of strategies for dealing with many different futures is hardly ever considered. But what if this future does not materialize? This paper describes a System Dynamics-based leadership flight simulator and the experiential serious gaming workshop it was tailor-made for. During the first part of the workshop, participants play the part of the leader of an organization but in rather different virtual worlds (scenarios) in order to experience the impact of long-term dynamic complexity and deep uncertainty on leadership, as well as the influence of leadership on the success of their virtual organization. After having experienced the role and effect of different leadership styles/strategies in different virtual worlds, participants dialogue/brainstorm in a bounce-casting session about strategies and actions to build robust leadership capabilities for an uncertain complex world.
Dendritic Cell-Based Vaccines Positively Impact Natural Killer and Regulatory T Cells in Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients

Immunotherapy of cancer must promote antitumor effector cells for tumor eradication as well as counteract immunoregulatory mechanisms which inhibit effectors. Immunologic therapies of cancer are showing promise, including dendritic cell-(DC-) based strategies. DC are highly malleable antigen-presenting cells which can promote potent antitumor immunity as well as tolerance, depending on the environmental signals received. Previously, we tested a peptide-pulsed DC vaccine to promote Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP-) specific anti-tumor immunity in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and reported on the CD8+ T cell responses induced by this vaccine and the clinical trial results. Here, we show that the peptide-loaded DC enhanced NK cell activation and decreased regulatory T cells (Treg) frequencies in vaccinated HCC patients. We also extend these data by testing several forms of DC vaccines in vitro to determine the impact of antigen loading and maturation signals on both NK cells and Treg from healthy donors and HCC patients.
FBXL20 acts as an invasion inducer and mediates E-cadherin in colorectal adenocarcinoma

The mechanisms eliciting colorectal adenocarcinoma are not well understood and the FBXL20 gene is problematic as it exhibits an abnormal expression in colorectal cancer cells. In the present study a recombinant plasmid, pReceiver-M03-FBL20 expression plasmid was constructed, which overexpressed FBXL20; this was transfected into Lovo cells to form Lovo-FBL20 cells. The FBXL20 expression level was examined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blot analysis. The cell viability and invasion capacity were measured using cell counting kit 8, Transwell chamber and wound healing assays, respectively. The associated genes, including E-cadherin, β-catenin, c-Myc, SET nuclear oncogene, protein phosphatase-2A, Axin, p53 and caspase 3, were detected by qPCR and western blotting. It was demonstrated that the FBXL20 expression level was markedly upregulated in the Lovo-FBL20 cells transfected with pReceiver-M03-FBL20 expression plasmid, compared with that of the Lovo cells. In addition, the cell viability and invasion capacity of the Lovo-FBL20 cells were significantly increased. These increases correlated with a significant upregulation in the expression level of β-catenin and c-Myc, and a downregulated expression level of E-cadherin. The results of the present study indicate that FBXL20 may mediate the ubiquitin degradation of E-cadherin resulting in an increased invasive ability of malignant cells.
Reprints Available Directly from the Publisher Photocopying Permitted by License Only Rat Stem-cell Factor Induces Splenocytes Capable of Regenerating the Thymus

Cytokine regulation of prethymic T-lymphoid progenitor-cell proliferation and/or differentiation has not been well-defined, although much is known of cytokine regulation of hemopoietic stem-and progenitor-cell development. Here we use a recently identified hemopoietic growth factor, stem-cell factor (SCF) (a form of the c-kit ligand), and a transplant model of thymocyte regeneration to assess the effect of SCF on the in vivo generation of prethymic, thymocyte progenitor-cell activity. We show that 164 recombinant rat SCF (rrSCF administered to weanling rats selectively induces an increase in thymocyte progenitor activity in the spleens of treated rats as compared to rats treated with vehicle, polyethylene glycol (PEG)-conjugated rat albumin, or recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (rhG-CSF). These data demonstrate that administration of SCF in vivo affects extrathymic-origin thymocyte regenerating cells and may influence, directly or indirectly, early prethymic stages of T-cell lymphopoiesis in addition to its known effect on early stages of myelopoiesis and erythropoiesis.
The Sensitivity of Tests of the Intertemporal Allocation of Consumption to Near-Rational Alternatives

This paper presents calculations of the utility cost to consumers of following alternative decision rules in the environments specified by tests of the intertemporal allocation of consumption on aggregate data. The alternatives include excess and inadequate sensitivity to income and interest rate changes and ignoring information. The calculations find that the costs of large deviations from the optimal decision rule--consumption equal to current income, for example--are on the order of l cent to $1 per quarter. They are interpreted to suggest that the theory does not make predictions that are robust to small inaccuracies of modeling, including small costs of transactions and information, and that those small costs can account for rejections of the theory as it is applied to aggregate US data.