Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Informal Employment in Bolivia: A Lost Proposition?

We study participation and relative earnings in the formal, informal, and self-employed sectors in Bolivia. We estimate quantile earnings equations corrected for self-selectivity to address potential biases in the estimates of relative earnings gaps due to the endogeneity of sector participation. Selectivity is significant in all three sectors for all three years studied. The benefits of being more formal like at low quantiles of the informal sector vanish from 1997 to 2002 as the availability of formal jobs decreases. The human capital model is very well fit for 1993 and 1997. In 2002 it is best fit for the formal sector where education and experience explain much of a worker's earnings, and worst fit for the self-employed sector where education does not play a role and experience is only important at high quantiles. We exploit the semi-parametric nature of quantile regression to link the conditional returns to worker characteristics, obtained from the quantile regressions, with the poverty status of households to determine the extent to which unobserved earnings determinants interact with observed characteristics to penalize non-formal workers in poor households. We find that females in non-formal employment suffer the largest penalties. In unreported results (available from the authors upon request) we perform a counterfactual analysis of conditional earnings by sector, decomposing the earnings gaps into differences in endowments of skills and differences in returns to skills. The results suggest segmentation between the formal and informal sector at the lowest conditional quantiles, while higher productivity workers seem to have a choice of which sector to work in
Analysis of Tourist Leisure Activities in Integrated Resorts Based on the Constraint Negotiation Strategies

Based on the Constraint Negotiation Strategies, this study aims to explore whether three types of constraint factors and their hierarchy relations can be applied to Chinese tourists. The subject of this study is the leisure activities of Chinese tourists taking a leisure vacation. The study tends to figure out the main constraint factors and their corresponding negotiation strategies. The authors conduct confirmatory factor analysis to the data collected and also perform the Structural Equation Model to test the Constraint Negotiation Model and its hypotheses. The results show that structural constraints have a significant influence on participation to leisure activities. Driven by motivation to have a leisure vacation, tourists choose ReBAM as their negotiation strategy to fulfill their need of participating in leisure activities. While still maintaining some very special features of its own, leisure tourism in China is gradually merging with the international trend for tourism development.
Unitriangular factorisations of Chevalley groups

Lately, the following problem has attracted a lot of attention in various contexts: find the shortest factorisation $G=UU^-UU^-. U^{\pm}$ of a Chevalley group $G=G(\Phi,R)$ in terms of the unipotent radical $U=U(\Phi,R)$ of the standard Borel subgroup $B=B(\Phi,R)$ and the unipotent radical $U^-=U^-(\Phi,R)$ of the opposite Borel subgroup $B^-=B^-(\Phi,R)$. So far, the record over a finite field was established in a 2010 paper by Babai, Nikolov, and Pyber, where they prove that a group of Lie type admits unitriangular factorisation $G=UU^-UU^-U$ of length 5. Their proof invokes deep analytic and combinatorial tools. In the present paper we notice that from the work of Bass and Tavgen one immediately gets a much more general result, asserting that over any ring of stable rank 1 one has unitriangular factorisation $G=UU^-UU^-$ of length 4. Moreover, we give a detailed survey of triangular factorisations, prove some related results, discuss prospects of generalisation to other classes of rings, and state several unsolved problems. Another main result of the present paper asserts that, in the assumption of the Generalised Riemann's Hypothesis, Chevalley groups over the ring $\Int\Big[\displaystyle{1\over p}\Big]$ admit unitriangular factorisation $G=UU^-UU^-UU^-$ of length 6. Otherwise, the best length estimate for Hasse domains with infinite multiplicative groups that follows from the work of Cooke and Weinberger, gives 9 factors.
Martingale Property of Exchange Rates and Central Bank Interventions

This article uses the variance ratio-based multiple comparison test and the Richardson–Smith Wald test procedures to test for the martingale property of daily exchange rates of seven major currencies vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar. To allow for the possibility that exchange rates are not governed by a single process throughout the float, the test statistics are calculated and plotted for fixed-length moving subsample windows rather than being applied to the full sample. The results show that exchange rates do not always follow the martingale process. During the times of coordinated central bank interventions, exchange rates deviate from the martingale property.
Protective effects of ethyl pyruvate on sperm quality in cyclophosphamide treated mice

Background: One of the affecting factors in disturbance process of spermatogenesis is chemotherapeutic-induced oxidative stress resulted from cyclophosphamide (CP) treatment which leads to diminished sperm quality via interference in spermatogenesis process. Objective: This study was conducted to investigate the effects of ethyl pyruvate (EP) in reducing the CP-induced side effects on reproductive system. Materials and Methods: 24 mature male mice were randomly divided into 3 equal groups and were undergone therapy for 35 days. Control group received normal saline (0.1 ml/day, IP). CP group were injected CP (15 mg/kg/week, IP) and CP+EP group received EP (40 mg/kg/day, IP) as well as CP. In the end of the treatment period, the mice were euthanized by cervical dislocation. Then, the epididymis was incubated with CO2 in a human tubal fluid medium (1 ml) for half an hour in order to float sperm. Then, the number, motility, viability (eosin-nigrosin staining), DNA breakage (acridine orange staining), nucleus maturity, and sperm morphology (aniline blue staining) were analyzed. Results: The average (15.87±1.28), motility (35.77±2.75), viability (40±3.03), nucleus maturity (36±2.79) and sperm morphology (61.75±0.85) were decreased significantly in CP group in comparison with control and EP groups, whereas EP caused significant increase of these parameters. Also, the percentage of DNA damage was increased significantly in CP group (41.75±3.75) in comparison with control (2±0.71) and EP groups (22.5±4.13). Conclusion: The results of this study revealed ameliorating effects of EP on sperm quality of CP treated animals.
Joint estimates of automatic and discretionary fiscal policy for the OECD

Official calculations of automatic stabilizers are seriously flawed since they rest on the assumption that the only element of social spending that reacts automatically to the cycle is unemployment compensation. This puts into question many estimates of discretionary fiscal policy. In response, we propose a simultaneous estimate of automatic and discretionary fiscal policy. This leads us, quite naturally, to a tripartite decomposition of the budget balance between revenues, social spending and other spending as a bare minimum. Our headline results for a panel of 20 OECD countries in 1981-2003 are . 59 automatic stabilization in percentage-points of primary surplus balances. All of this stabilization remains following discretionary responses during contractions, but arguably only about 3/5 of it remains so in expansions while discretionary behavior cancels the rest. We pay a lot of attention to the impact of the Maastricht Treaty and the SGP on the EU members of our sample and to real time data.
Spillover Effect of the Minimum Wage in France: An Unconditional Quantile Regression Approach

This study evaluates the impact of the minimum wage on the earnings distribution in France, using an unconditional quantile regression method proposed by Firpo, Fortin, and Lemieux (2009). To address the endogeneity issue due to the specific French revaluation process of the minimum wage, we use a natural experiment. As several minimum wage levels coexisted because of different schedules in the French 35-hour week" application, they were forced to converge to one single level between 2003 and 2005. We find significant effects of the minimum wage on the earnings distribution of male and female employees up to the seventh decile.
Deficiency in Cardiac Dystrophin Affects the Abundance of the α-/β-Dystroglycan Complex

Although Duchenne muscular dystrophy is primarily categorised as a skeletal muscle disease, deficiency in the membrane cytoskeletal protein dystrophin also affects the heart. The central transsarcolemmal linker between the actin membrane cytoskeleton and the extracellular matrix is represented by the dystrophin-associated dystroglycans. Chemical cross-linking analysis revealed no significant differences in the dimeric status of the α-/β-dystroglycan subcomplex in the dystrophic mdx heart as compared to normal cardiac tissue. In analogy to skeletal muscle fibres, heart muscle also exhibited a greatly reduced abundance of both dystroglycans in dystrophin-deficient cells. Immunoblotting demonstrated that the degree of reduction in α-dystroglycan is more pronounced in matured mdx skeletal muscle as contrasted to the mdx heart. The fact that the deficiency in dystrophin triggers a similar pathobiochemical response in both types of muscle suggests that the cardiomyopathic complications observed in x-linked muscular dystrophy might be initiated by the loss of the dystrophin-associated surface glycoprotein complex.
Copy number variation analysis in the context of electronic medical records and large-scale genomics consortium efforts

The goal of this paper is to review recent research on copy number variations (CNVs) and their association with complex and rare diseases. In the latter part of this paper, we focus on how large biorepositories such as the electronic medical record and genomics (eMERGE) consortium may be best leveraged to systematically mine for potentially pathogenic CNVs, and we end with a discussion of how such variants might be reported back for inclusion in electronic medical records as part of medical history.
Does Aid Induce Brain Drain? The Effect of Foreign Aid on Migration Selection

Recent evidence suggests that aid induces migration. However, total migration is quite general from a policy perspective since what explains the welfare consequences of migration is the extent of emigration selection. In this paper we ask whether skilled or unskilled migration is more sensitive to aid and to the different mechanisms through which aid may affect self-selection among international emigrants. We show that aid induces positive selection. And that the effect on skilled migration is larger than the effect on unskilled migration. As possible mechanisms to explain the relation, we find that aid induces skilled migration by reducing transaction and information costs, by improving the distribution of schooling, and by helping to overcome liquidity constraints.
Anti-Inflammatory Effects of Arsenic Trioxide Eluting Stents in a Porcine Coronary Model

Previous research from our group has demonstrated arsenic trioxide eluting stents significantly reduced neointimal area and thickness compared with bare metal stents. In the present study, the anti-inflammatory effects of arsenic trioxide in vitro and arsenic trioxide eluting stents in a porcine coronary model have been explored. Sixty-five pigs underwent placement of 139 oversized stents in the coronary arteries with histologic analysis, endothelial function analysis, and immunohistochemical and western blot analyses. Arsenic trioxide eluting stents effectively inhibited local inflammatory reactions, while no significant difference in endothelialization and endothelial function between arsenic trioxide eluting stents and bare metal stents was observed. Arsenic trioxide eluting stents favorably modulate neointimal formation due to less augmentation of early inflammatory reactions, and quick endothelialization of the stent surface, which might contribute to long-term safety and efficacy of drug eluting stents.
Non-Abelian Pseudocompact Groups

Here are three recently-established theorems from the literature. (A) (2006) Every non-metrizable compact abelian group K has 2|K| -many proper dense pseudocompact subgroups. (B) (2003) Every non-metrizable compact abelian group K admits 22|K| -many strictly finer pseudocompact topological group refinements. (C) (2007) Every non-metrizable pseudocompact abelian group has a proper dense pseudocompact subgroup and a strictly finer pseudocompact topological group refinement. (Theorems (A), (B) and (C) become false if the non-metrizable hypothesis is omitted. ) With a detailed view toward the relevant literature, the present authors ask: What happens to (A), (B), (C) and to similar known facts about pseudocompact abelian groups if the abelian hypothesis is omitted? Are the resulting statements true, false, true under certain natural additional hypotheses, etc.? Several new results responding in part to these questions are given, and several specific additional questions are posed.
Demineralized Bone Matrix Injection in Consolidation Phase Enhances Bone Regeneration in Distraction Osteogenesis via Endochondral Bone Formation

Background Distraction osteogenesis (DO) is a promising tool for bone and tissue regeneration. However, prolonged healing time remains a major problem. Various materials including cells, cytokines, and growth factors have been used in an attempt to enhance bone formation. We examined the effect of percutaneous injection of demineralized bone matrix (DBM) during the consolidation phase on bone regeneration after distraction. Methods The immature rabbit tibial DO model (20 mm length-gain) was used. Twenty-eight animals received DBM 100 mg percutaneously at the end of distraction. Another 22 animals were left without further procedure (control). Plain radiographs were taken every week. Postmortem bone dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) studies were performed at the third and sixth weeks of the consolidation period and histological analysis was performed. Results The regenerate bone mineral density was higher in the DBM group when compared with that in the saline injection control group at the third week postdistraction. Quantitative analysis using micro-CT revealed larger trabecular bone volume, higher trabecular number, and less trabecular separation in the DBM group than in the saline injection control group. Cross-sectional area and cortical thickness at the sixth week postdistraction, assessed using micro-CT, were greater in the regenerates of the DBM group compared with the control group. Histological evaluation revealed higher trabecular bone volume and trabecular number in the regenerate of the DBM group. New bone formation was apparently enhanced, via endochondral ossification, at the site and in the vicinity of the injected DBM. DBM was absorbed slowly, but it remained until the sixth postoperative week after injection. Conclusions DBM administration into the distraction gap at the end of the distraction period resulted in a significantly greater regenerate bone area, trabecular number, and cortical thickness in the rabbit tibial DO model. These data suggest that percutaneous DBM administration at the end of the distraction period or in the early consolidation period may stimulate regenerate bone formation and consolidation in a clinical situation with delayed bone healing during DO.
Altered gamma oscillations during pregnancy through loss of δ subunit-containing GABAA receptors on parvalbumin interneurons

Gamma (γ) oscillations (30–120 Hz), an emergent property of neuronal networks, correlate with memory, cognition and encoding. In the hippocampal CA3 region, locally generated γ oscillations emerge through feedback between inhibitory parvalbumin-positive basket cells (PV+BCs) and the principal (pyramidal) cells. PV+BCs express δ-subunit-containing GABAARs (δ-GABAARs) and NMDA receptors (NMDA-Rs) that balance the frequency of γ oscillations. Neuroactive steroids (NS), such as the progesterone-derived (3α,5α)-3-hydroxy-pregnan-20-one (allopregnanolone; ALLO), modulate the expression of δ-GABAARs and the tonic conductance they mediate. Pregnancy produces large increases in ALLO and brain-region-specific homeostatic changes in δ-GABAARs expression. Here we show that in CA3, where most PV+ interneurons (INs) express δ-GABAARs, expression of δ-GABAARs on INs diminishes during pregnancy, but reverts to control levels within 48 h postpartum. These anatomical findings were corroborated by a pregnancy-related increase in the frequency of kainate-induced CA3 γ oscillations in vitro that could be countered by the NMDA-R antagonists D-AP5 and PPDA. Mimicking the typical hormonal conditions during pregnancy by supplementing 100 nM ALLO lowered the γ frequencies to levels found in virgin or postpartum mice. Our findings show that states of altered NS levels (e.g., pregnancy) may provoke perturbations in γ oscillatory activity through direct effects on the GABAergic system, and underscore the importance of δ-GABAARs homeostatic plasticity in maintaining constant network output despite large hormonal changes. Inaccurate coupling of NS levels to δ-GABAAR expression may facilitate abnormal neurological and psychiatric conditions such as epilepsy, post-partum depression, and post-partum psychosis, thus providing insights into potential new treatments.
Prototyping A stepping-stone to more successful Prototyping

On average only 29% of software projects are completed on time and within budget. The biggest single cause of failing software projects are incomplete or incorrect requirements. The participation of users in the development of software is seen as an important software success factor. A well-known method that facilitates user participation is prototyping. It is widely believed that prototyping increases the quality of software requirements. Although the adoption rate of prototyping is high and the number of prototyping methods increases, empirical research shows that the effect of prototyping on software quality is actually moderate. There is a lack of research that addresses the question of how prototyping is best applied in order to increase the success of software. In this research a theoretical framework is proposed that addresses this question. The completion of a two-day experiment with 18 participants, shows that the cooperation between the developer and users in a prototyping process, compared to the demonstration of a prototype, increases the number of mentioned ideas per person 4 times. The use of a low-fidelity prototype, instead of a high-fidelity prototype, in a cooperative prototyping method increases the number of ideas per person even further, with a factor 1.5, in this particular experiment.
User Acceptance and Willingness to Pay for Connected Vehicle Technologies: Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis

The preferences of drivers and their willingness to pay (WTP) for connected vehicle (CV) technologies were estimated with the use of adaptive choice-based conjoint (ACBC) analysis, the newest such method available. More than 500 usable surveys were collected through an online survey. Respondents were asked to choose from variously priced CV technology bundles (e.g., collision prevention, roadway information system). The study found that the acceptance level of the CV technologies was high, given that an absolute majority of survey respondents had the highest preferences for the most comprehensive technology bundle in each attribute. However, a comparison of the average importance of each attribute, including bundle prices, implied that price would be an important constraint and would influence CV deployment rates. At the attribute level, collision prevention technology received the highest importance score (i.e., the safety benefits most appealed to drivers). The ACBC analysis seemed to mimic well the trade-offs that people would consider in their actual purchasing decisions. The difference between WTP and self-explicated prices obtained before preferences were estimated was statistically significant (i.e., participants chose bundles after they considered product attributes and prices). This finding also affirmed that the ACBC analysis was a more appropriate method than the direct questioning methods used in past studies. Finally, certain socioeconomic characteristics were positively related to WTP. Those respondents that were knowledgeable about CV technologies and showed more innovativeness had higher WTP as well.
Curbing urban traffic congestion in Singapore: A comprehensive review

Since 1975, Singapore has introduced a relentless series of traditional and experimental measures to slow down the growth of the motor vehicle population and to control its usage. Since usage and not ownership causes congestion, the authors now believe that electronic road pricing (ERP) is the ultimate solution to Singapore's road congestion problem because it is flexible, efficient, operationally nonintrusive, and most importantly, effective in putting Singapore in the first-best world of Pareto optimality.
A KALDI-DNN-based ASR system for Italian

In this paper, the KALDI ASR engine adapted to Italian is described and the results obtained so far on some children speech ASR experiments are reported. We give a brief overview of KALDI, we describe in detail its DNN implementation, we introduce the acoustic model (AM) training procedure and we end describing some experiments on Italian children speech together with the final test procedures.
Persistent disturbance rejection via static-state feedback

In contrast with /spl Hscr//sub /spl infin// and /spl Hscr//sub 2/ control theories, the problem of persistent disturbance rejection (l/sup 1/ optimal control) leads to dynamic controllers, even when the states of the plant are available for feedback. Using viability theory, Shamma showed (1993), in a nonconstructive way, that in the state-feedback case the same performance achieved by any dynamic linear time-invariant controller can be achieved using memoryless nonlinear state feedback. In this paper we give an alternative, constructive proof of these results for discrete- and continuous-time systems. The main result of the paper shows that in both cases, the l/sup 1/ norm achieved by any stabilizing state-feedback linear dynamic controller can be also achieved using a memoryless variable structure controller. >
Variable tap-length adaptive algorithm which exploits both second and fourth order statistics

A new variable tap-length adaptive algorithm which exploits both second and fourth order statistics is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, the tap-length of the adaptive filter is varying rather than fixed, and controlled by fourth order statistics, whereas the coefficient update retains a conventional least mean square (LMS) form. As will be seen in the simulation results, the proposed algorithm has a faster convergence rate as compared with an existing variable tap-length LMS algorithm which is based only on second order statistics in sub-Gaussian noise environments.
Homotopy theory of presheaves of Gamma-spaces

We consider the category of presheaves of Gamma-spaces, or equivalently, of Gamma-objects in simplicial presheaves. Our main result is the construction of stable model structures on this category parametrised by local model structures on simplicial presheaves. If a local model structure on simplicial presheaves is monoidal, the corresponding stable model structure on presheaves of Gamma-spaces is monoidal and satisfies the monoid axiom. This allows us to lift the stable model structures to categories of algebras and modules over commutative algebras.