Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Democracy on Economic Growth: Some Evidence from Cross-National Analysis

It has often been maintained that political democracy has a negative impact on economic growth, particularly in less developed countries. Here, cross‐national regressions of two different growth variables on political democracy and on control variables, based on about 90 nations, are reported for the 1960 to 1979 period. Control variables include GNP per capita, gross domestic investment, school enrollment ratios, and sometimes the military participation ratio. While first results seem to support the notion of a negative growth effect of democracy, closer scrutiny reveals that this effect is no longer significant once the analysis is restricted to (more than 70) LDCs only. While a fairly strong and negative impact of democracy on growth can be demonstrated for nations where government revenue exceeds 20|X% of GDP, elsewhere there is no effect at all. It is not democracy itself that hurts the growth prospects of nations, but the combination of democracy and strong state interference with the economy.
Some Surprising Facts About Working Time Accounts and the Business Cycle

Working time accounts (WTAs) allow firms to smooth hours worked over time. This paper analyzes whether this increase in flexibility has also affected how firms adjust employment in Germany. Using a rich microeconomic dataset, we show that firms with WTAs show a similar separation and hiring behavior in response to revenue changes as firms without WTAs. One possible explanation is that firms without WTAs used short-time work instead to adjust hours worked. However, we find that firms with WTAs use short-time work more than firms without WTAs. These findings call into question the popular hypothesis that WTAs were the key driver of the unusually small increase in German unemployment in the Great Recession.
Incidence Rates of Clinically Significant Tinnitus: 10-Year Trend From a Cohort Study in England

Objective: To investigate the incidence of tinnitus that burdens the health service in England. Design: This was an observational study of 4.7 million residents of England under 85 years of age who were at risk for developing clinically significant tinnitus (sigT). SigT was defined by a discharge from hospital with a primary diagnosis of tinnitus, or a primary care recording of tinnitus with subsequent related medical follow-up within 28 days. The database used was the Clinical Practice Research Datalink and individual records were linked to additional data from the Hospital Episode Statistics. The observational period was from January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2011. Age-, gender-, and calendar year-specific incidence rates for and cumulative incidences of sigT were estimated and a projection of new cases of sigT between 2012 and 2021 was performed. Results: There were 14,303 incident cases of sigT identified among 26.5 million person-years of observation. The incidence rate was 5.4 new cases of sigT per 10,000 person-years (95% confidence interval: 5.3 to 5.5). The incidence rate did not depend on gender but increased with age, peaking at 11.4 per 10,000 in the age group 60 to 69 years. The annual incidence rate of sigT increased from 4.5 per 10,000 person-years in 2002 to 6.6 per 10,000 person-years in 2011. The 10-year cumulative incidence of sigT was 58.4 cases (95% confidence interval: 57.4 to 59.4) per 10,000 residents. Nearly 324,000 new cases of sigT are expected to occur in England between 2012 and 2021. Conclusions: Tinnitus presents a burden to the health care system that has been rising in recent years. Population-based studies provide crucial underpinning evidence; highlighting the need for further research to address issues around effective diagnosis and clinical management of this heterogeneous condition.
Consequences of Avian Flu for Growth and Poverty: A CGE Analysis for Kenya

: Like many African countries, Kenya is vulnerable to avian flu given its position along migratory bird routes and proximity to other high risk countries. This raises concern about the effect of an outbreak on rural livelihoods. We use a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of Kenya to simulate outbreaks of different severities, durations and geographic spreads. Results indicate that even a severe outbreak does not greatly reduce economic growth. It does, however, have larger implications for poverty, since poultry is an income source for many poor farmers and a major food item in poor consumers’ baskets. Reducing an outbreak's duration and spatial transmission substantially reduces economic losses, although losses still occur when poultry demand falls, even without a confirmed outbreak. Continued monitoring of poultry production and trade is therefore needed, even if an outbreak has not yet occurred. Efforts to enhance government capacity to respond rapidly to infections and improve farmers’ and consumers’ awareness of avian flu are also needed.
The Luminosity Density of Red Galaxies

A complete sample of 7.7 × 104 galaxies with five-band imaging and spectroscopic redshifts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey is used to determine the fraction of the optical luminosity density of the local universe (redshifts 0.02 < z < 0.22) emitted by red galaxies. The distribution in the space of rest-frame color, central surface brightness, and concentration is shown to be highly clustered and bimodal; galaxies fall primarily into one of two distinct classes. One class is red, concentrated, and high in surface brightness; the other is bluer, less concentrated, and lower in central surface brightness. Elliptical and bulge-dominated galaxies preferentially belong to the red class. Even with a very restrictive definition of the red class that includes limits on color, surface brightness, and concentration, the class comprises roughly one-fifth of the number density of galaxies more luminous than 0.05L* and produces two-fifths of the total cosmic galaxy luminosity density at 0.7 μm. The natural interpretation is that a large fraction of the stellar mass density of the local universe is in very old stellar populations.
Changes in Spanish Labor Income Structure During the 1980's:a Quantile Regression Approach

The objective of this study is to show how labor income structure changed in Spain during the 1980's. For this purpose quantile regression techniques are applied. The advantage of using quantile regressions resides in the possibility of a more accurate description of the conditional distribution of labor income. This allows us to analyze the changes in both tails of the distribution rather than just in the mean. The results show a decrease both in returns to schooling and in within groups dispersion. (JEL J31, C21)
Relationships Among Species of Scirtothrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae, Thripinae) Using Molecular and Morphological Data

Abstract Results of analyses of molecular sequence (COI, 28S-D2) and morphology (21 character states) data, both alone and combined, were used to determine relationships between 18 species of Scirtothrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae, Thripinae). Two species of Neohydatothrips from Panama were used as the outgroup. Five major pest Scirtothrips were included in these analyses: S. aurantii, S. citri, S. dorsalis, S. kenyensis, and S. perseae. Trees generated from a parsimony analysis of molecular data and Bayesian analysis of molecular and morphology data combined showed high levels of congruence. The morphology-only tree had several differences in species groupings when compared with trees derived using molecular data. Both parsimony and Bayesian analyses using molecular data indicated that Scirtothrips species associated with avocados were monophyletic, a result not observed with morphological analyses. No support was found for a monophyletic S. dorsalis clade when sampled from six different countries. The S. dorsalis complex may be comprised of at least three separable groups identifiable at the molecular level, but indistinguishable morphologically. The implications of this finding for S. dorsalis, a thrips pest of global significance with high invasion potential, are discussed.
Imitation to Innovation: Late Movers’ Catch-up Strategy and Technological Leadership Change

Little attention has been devoted to the question of how late movers overcome first-mover advantage and catch up with incumbents. We examine the role in catch-up of late movers’ optimal resource allocation between innovation and imitation. Building on Nelson and Winter’s (1982) technology learning and competition model, we develop computational models of late movers’ RD then, as the technological gap decreases, the late mover should allocate more R&D resources to innovation and attempt technological leapfrogging. This transition from imitation to innovation plays a critical role in catch-up. We also test our models including a range of technological environment variables such as appropriability, cumulativeness, and technological opportunity. Our model shows that our original findings are resilient across a wide range of technological environment variables.
Poverty-Measurement Research Using the Consumer Expenditure Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation

The most recent comprehensive examination of poverty measurement in the United States was conducted by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance (Constance F. Citro and Robert T. Michael, 1995). In their report, the Panel recommended changing the definition of both the poverty thresholds and the resources that are used to measure poverty. In this paper we implement a number of the Panel's basic procedures, with slight modifications, to obtain experimental poverty rates for 1991 to 1996. ' This paper presents poverty estimates using thresholds derived from the 1989-1991 Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), and using family resources based on the 1991 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the March 1992 Current Population Survey (CPS). The resulting experimental poverty rates are compared to those based on the official measure. While most previous work has examined the new poverty measure exclusively using the CPS, this paper presents, for the first time, estimates from the SIPP, the survey that the Panel recommended should become the official source of poverty resource measurement. Additional estimates from the CPS from 1992-1996 are presented in order to examine the behavior of these experimental poverty rates over time. Our findings reveal that changes in the poverty rates based on the official and the experimental measures are similar over time. We show that poverty rates using SIPP data are below those using the CPS. We also show that using the experimental poverty measure yields a poverty population that looks more like the total population in terms of various demographic and socioeconomic characteristics than does the poverty population based on the current official measure.
Mapping Hfq-RNA interaction surfaces using tryptophan fluorescence quenching

Hfq is a posttranscriptional riboregulator and RNA chaperone that binds small RNAs and target mRNAs to effect their annealing and message-specific regulation in response to environmental stressors. Structures of Hfq-RNA complexes indicate that U-rich sequences prefer the proximal face and A-rich sequences the distal face; however, the Hfq-binding sites of most RNAs are unknown. Here, we present an Hfq-RNA mapping approach that uses single tryptophan-substituted Hfq proteins, all of which retain the wild-type Hfq structure, and tryptophan fluorescence quenching (TFQ) by proximal RNA binding. TFQ properly identified the respective distal and proximal binding of A15 and U6 RNA to Gram-negative Escherichia coli (Ec) Hfq and the distal face binding of (AA)3A, (AU)3A and (AC)3A to Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus (Sa) Hfq. The inability of (GU)3G to bind the distal face of Sa Hfq reveals the (R-L)n binding motif is a more restrictive (A-L)n binding motif. Remarkably Hfq from Gram-positive Listeria monocytogenes (Lm) binds (GU)3G on its proximal face. TFQ experiments also revealed the Ec Hfq (A-R-N)n distal face-binding motif should be redefined as an (A-A-N)n binding motif. TFQ data also demonstrated that the 5′-untranslated region of hfq mRNA binds both the proximal and distal faces of Ec Hfq and the unstructured C-terminus.
Effect of subtherapeutic vs. therapeutic administration of macrolides on antimicrobial resistance in Mannheimia haemolytica and enterococci isolated from beef cattle

Macrolides are the first-line treatment against bovine respiratory disease (BRD), and are also used to treat infections in humans. The macrolide, tylosin phosphate, is often included in the diet of cattle as a preventative for liver abscesses in many regions of the world outside of Europe. This study investigated the effects of administering macrolides to beef cattle either systemically through a single subcutaneous injection (therapeutic) or continuously in-feed (subtherapeutic), on the prevalence and antimicrobial resistance of Mannheimia haemolytica and Enterococcus spp. isolated from the nasopharynx and faeces, respectively. Nasopharyngeal and faecal samples were collected weekly over 28 days from untreated beef steers and from steers injected once with tilmicosin or tulathromycin or continuously fed tylosin phosphate at dosages recommended by manufacturers. Tilmicosin and tulathromycin were effective in lowering (P < 0.05) the prevalence of M. haemolytica, whereas subtherapeutic tylosin had no effect. M. haemolytica isolated from control- and macrolide-treated animals were susceptible to macrolides as well as to other antibiotics. Major bacteria co-isolated with M. haemolytica from the nasopharynx included Pasteurella multocida, Staphylococcus spp. , Acinetobacter spp. , Escherichia coli and Bacillus spp. With the exception of M. haemolytica and P. multocida, erythromycin resistance was frequently found in other isolated species. Both methods of macrolide administration increased (P < 0.05) the proportion of erythromycin resistant enterococci within the population, which was comprised almost exclusively of Enterococcus hirae. Injectable macrolides impacted both respiratory and enteric microbes, whereas orally administered macrolides only influenced enteric bacteria.
Determinants of inequalities in health with focus on retired - with particular regard to retired Danes

Previous studies of health inequality across European countries have shown intriguing results, in particular for Denmark with high index of income-related inequality in health. Status as retired was found to be the most important determinant of health inequality. We decomposed the inequality index and looked further into the contribution by retired to inequality in health by dividing the retired into two or three age groups. Hypotheses about the factors that constitute the contribution by retired to the overall inequality in health were tested (the share of the population being retired, the health of retired, and the income of retired). We used data from the European Household Panel and SHARE and found that all three factors contribute to the high contribution by retired to the overall inequality index particularly from Denmark. The contribution was most remarkable for the oldest age group among retired, which is explained by the fact that the group of younger retired has better coverage through labour market related pensions in supplement to the universal public pension scheme.
Multi-lane detection in urban driving environments using conditional random fields

Over the past few decades, the need has arisen for multi-lane detection algorithms for use in vehicle safety-related applications. In this paper we propose a new multi-lane detection algorithm that works well in urban situations. This algorithm detects four lane marks, including driving lane marks and adjacent lane marks. Conventional research assumes that lanes are parallel. In contrast, our approach does not require this assumption, thus enabling the algorithm to manage various non-parallel lane situations, such as are found at intersections, in splitting lanes, and in merging lanes. To detect multi-lane marks successfully in the absence of parallelism, we adopt Conditional Random Fields (CRFs), which are strong models for solving multiple association tasks. We show that CRFs are very effective tools for multi-lane detection because they find an optimal association of multiple lane marks in complex and challenging urban road situations. Through simulations, and by using video sequences with 752-480 resolution and Caltech Lane Datasets with runtime rates of 30 fps, we verify that our algorithm successfully detects non-parallel lanes as well as parallel lanes appearing in urban streets.
Schooling America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation's Changing Needs

Patricia Graham is one of America's most esteemed historians of education, formerly Dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education and Director of the National Institute of Education. In this informative volume, Graham offers a vibrant history of American education in the last century. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from government reports to colorful anecdotes, Graham skillfully illustrates Americans' changing demands for our schools, and how schools have responded by providing what critics want, though never as completely or as quickly as they would like. In 1900, as waves of immigrants swept the nation, the American public wanted schools to assimilate students into American life, combining the basics of English and arithmetic with emphasis on patriotism, hard work, fair play and honesty. In the 1920s, the focus shifted from schools serving a national need to serving individual needs; education was to help children adjust to life. By 1954 the emphasis moved to access, particularly for African-American children to desegregated classrooms, but also access to special programs for the gifted, the poor, the disabled, and non-English speakers. Now Americans want achievement for all, defined as higher test scores. The public largely ignored colleges until after World War II when research received international recognition and enrollments grew. Throughout the narrative, we meet the passionate educators, scholars and journalists who drove particular agendas, and we also meet Graham's own family, starting with her immigrant father's first day of school and moving through her experiences as a teacher. Invaluable background in the ongoing debate on education in the United States, this book offers an insightful look at what the public has sought from its educational institutions, what educators have delivered, and what remains to be done.
SPIN1, a K Homology Domain Protein Negatively Regulated and Ubiquitinated by the E3 Ubiquitin Ligase SPL11, Is Involved in Flowering Time Control in Rice[W]

The rice (Oryza sativa) E3 ligase SPOTTED LEAF11 (SPL11) negatively regulates programmed cell death and disease resistance. We demonstrate here that SPL11 also regulates flowering via interaction with SPIN1 (for SPL11-interacting protein1), a Signal Transduction and Activation of RNA family member. SPIN1 binds RNA and DNA in vitro and interacts with SPL11 in the nucleus. Spl11 mutants have delayed flowering under long-day conditions. Spin1 overexpression causes late flowering independently of daylength; expression analyses of flowering marker genes in these lines suggested that SPIN1 represses flowering by downregulating the flowering promoter gene Heading date3a (Hd3a) via Hd1-dependent mechanisms in short days and by targeting Hd1-independent factors in long days. Both Spin1 and Spl11 are regulated diurnally in opposing phases. SPL11 negatively regulates Spin1 transcript levels, while SPIN1 also affects Spl11 expression. Moreover, we show that coincidence of high accumulation of Spin1 mRNA with the light in the morning and early evening is needed to repress flowering. SPIN1 is monoubiquitinated by SPL11, suggesting that it is not targeted for degradation. Our data are consistent with a model in which SPIN1 acts as a negative regulator of flowering that itself is negatively regulated by SPL11, possibly via ubiquitination.
Crowd counting estimation in video surveillance based on linear regression function

Nowadays the estimation of crowd density and people counting is a great focus under public security affairs in surveillance. A scheme for crowd counting estimation based on linear regression function is proposed in this paper. In the proposed scheme, the Light Effect Suppression Model (LESM), which effectively reduces the sensitivity to illumination change, is applied to extract the foreground. Besides the number of foreground pixels, a novel feature called Oriented Inner Edges (OIEs) is proposed in this paper to deal with the problem of occlusion. Moreover, a new method of perspective normalization is applied during the feature extraction procedure to reduce the deviation caused by perspective distortion to the greatest extent. The final experimental results show that the proposed scheme is effective and feasible.
ABUNDANCE GRADIENTS IN THE OUTER GALACTIC DISK FROM PLANETARY NEBULAE

Radial abundance gradients of the element ratios O/H, Ne/H, S/H, and Ar/H are determined on the basis of a sample of disk planetary nebulae. The behaviour of the gradi- ents at large distances from the galactic centre, R>R 0 =7 :6 kpc, is emphasized. It is concluded that the derived gradients are consistent with an approximately constant slope in the inner parts of the Galaxy, and some flattening for distances larger than R0. A comparison is made with previous determinations using both photoionized nebulae and young stars, and some conse- quences on theoretical models for the chemical evolution of the galactic disk are discussed.
Multitask multiclass privileged information support vector machines

In this paper, we propose a new learning paradigm named multitask multiclass privileged information support vector machines. The starting point of our work is mainly based on the success of multitask multiclass support vector machines which cast multitask multiclass problems as a constrained optimization problem with a quadratic objective function. Learning using privileged information is an advanced learning paradigm integrated with the idea of human teaching in machine learning. This paper mainly extends multitask multi-class support vector machines to privileged information learning strategy. Our approach can take full advantages of the multitask learning and privileged information. Experimental results show that our approaches obtains very good results for multitask multiclass problems.
CD4 Counts and Viral Loads of Newly Diagnosed HIV-Infected Individuals: Implications for Treatment as Prevention

Objective To report the viral load and CD4 count in HIV-infected, antiretroviral naïve, first -time HIV-testers, not immediately eligible for treatment initiation by current South Africa treatment guidelines. Design This was a cross-sectional study in a high-volume, free-of-charge HIV testing centre in Soweto, South Africa. Methods We enrolled first time HIV testers and collected demographic and risk-behaviour data and measured CD4 count and viral load. Results Between March and October 2011, a total of 4793 adults attended VCT and 1062 (22%) tested positive. Of the 1062, 799 (75%) were ART naïve and 348/799 (44%) were first-time HIV testers. Of this group of 348, 225 (65%) were female. Overall their median age, CD4 count and viral load was 34 years (IQR: 28-41), 364 (IQR: 238-542) cells/mm3 and 13,000 (IQR: 2050-98171) copies/ml, respectively. Female first time HIV testers had higher CD4 counts (419 IQR: 262-582 vs. 303 IQR: 199-418 cells/mm3) and lower viral loads (9,100 vs. 34,000 copies/ml) compared to males. Of 183 participants with CD4 count >350 cells/mm3, 62 (34%) had viral loads > 10,000 copies/ml. Conclusions A large proportion of HIV infected adults not qualifying for immediate ART at the CD4 count threshold of 350 cells/mm3 have high viral loads. HIV-infected men at their first HIV diagnosis are more likely to have lower CD4 counts and higher viral loads than women.