Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
MIXTURES OF FACTOR MODELS FOR MULTIVARIATE DISEASE RATES

• A range of different approaches have been suggested for the multivariate modelling of the geographical distribution of different but potentially related diseases. We suggest an addition to these methods which incorporates a discrete mixture of latent factors, as opposed to using CAR or MCAR random effect formulations. Our proposal provides for a potentially richer range of dependency structures than those encompassed in previously used models in that it is capable of representing an enhanced range of correlation structures between diseases at the same time as implicitly allowing for less restrictive spatial correlation structures between geographical units. We illustrate results of using the model on data taken from cancer registries on four carcinomas in some 300 UK geographical areas.
M dwarfs at large heliocentric distances

We present an analysis of the faint M star population seen as foreground contaminants in deep extragalactic surveys. We use space-based data to separate such stars from high-redshift galaxies in a publicly available data set, and consider the photometric properties of the resulting sample in the optical and infrared. The inferred distances place these stars well beyond the scaleheight of the thick disc. We find strong similarities between this faint sample (reaching i′AB= 25) and the brighter disc M dwarf population studied by other authors. The optical–infrared properties of the bulk of our sources spanning 6000 A-4.5 μm are consistent with those 5–10 mag brighter. We also present deep spectroscopy of faint M dwarf stars reaching continuum limits of i′AB≈ 26, and measure absorption-line strengths in the CaH2 and TiO5 bands. Both photometrically and spectroscopically, our sources are consistent with metallicities as low as a tenth solar: metal-rich compared with halo stars at similar heliocentric distances. We comment on the possible massive astrophysical compact halo object (MACHO) identification of M stars at faint magnitudes.
Reinforcing spirals at work? Mutual influences between selective news exposure and ideological leaning

The growth of partisan news sources has raised concerns that people will increasingly select attitude-consistent information, which might lead to increasing political polarization. Thus far, there is limited research on the long-term mutual influences between selective exposure and political attitudes. To remedy this, this study investigates the reciprocal influences between selective exposure and political attitudes over several years, using a three-wave panel survey conducted in Sweden during 2014–2016. More specifically, we analyse how ideological selective exposure to both traditional and online news media influences citizens’ ideological leaning. Findings suggest that (1) people seek-out ideologically consistent print news and online news and (2) such attitude-consistent news exposure reinforces citizens’ ideological leaning over time. In practice, however, such reinforcement effects are hampered by (3) relatively low overall ideological selective exposure and a (4) significant degree of cross-cutting news exposure online. These findings are discussed in light of selective exposure theory and the reinforcing spirals model.
Comparing Labour and Total Factor Productivity Growth and Level in France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States over the Past Century and in Recent Years §

The present study contributes to the analysis of economic growth by comparing labour ant total factor productivity (TFP) in France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States in the very long run (since 1890) and in the medium run (since 1980). During the past century, the United States has overtaken the United Kingdom and became the leading world economy. During the last 25 years, productivity growth has also known contrasted developments in the four countries, in particular as a result of an unequal growth of information and communication technology (ICT) investments. The past 120 years have been characterised by: (i) rapid economic growth and large productivity gains in the four countries; (ii) a decline in productivity in the United Kingdom relative to the United States, and to a lesser extent also relative to France and Japan until the second world war (WW2), and its subsequent come-back; (iii) the remarkable catching-up of the United States by France and Japan after WW2, which was however interrupted in the case of Japan during the 1990s. The contribution of capital deepening -as it can be measured- accounts for a large share of these different performances, with an increasing share of ICT capital in the last 25 years. This contribution varies considerably over time and across the four countries, and it is always less important, except in Japan, than that of the unmeasured factors underlying TFP, such as labour skills, technical and organisational changes and knowledge spillovers. Most recently (in 2006), before the current world crisis, hourly labour productivity levels are slightly higher in France than in the United States, and significantly lower in the United Kingdom (by roughly 10%) and even more in Japan (30%), while TFP levels are very close in France, the United Kingdom and the United States, but much lower (40%) in Japan.
Parental satisfaction with inclusion in physical education

ABSTRACT Knowledge is scarce on parental satisfaction with the inclusion of children with disabilities in physical education (PE). This study explored how parents’ satisfaction with inclusion in PE was associated with parental and child interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics. Seventy-two parents of children with disabilities participated in the survey-based study. The results of the ordinary least square regression (OLS) and quantile regression (QR) indicated that the parents’ satisfaction with social inclusion in PE was associated with their attitudes towards inclusion in PE, perceived PE-related information sharing, and the type of disability and degree of physical inclusion. Parents’ satisfaction with pedagogical inclusion of children in PE was associated with their attitudes towards inclusion in PE, PE-related information sharing, and the children’s degrees of disability and physical inclusion. Furthermore, the QR estimates indicated that the explanatory strength of parental attitudes towards inclusion in PE varied with the degree of parental satisfaction with social and pedagogical inclusion of their children in PE. Practical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed.
Neither Replication nor Simulation Supports a Role for the Axon Guidance Pathway in the Genetics of Parkinson's Disease

Susceptibility to sporadic Parkinson's disease (PD) is thought to be influenced by both genetic and environmental factors and their interaction with each other. Statistical models including multiple variants in axon guidance pathway genes have recently been purported to be capable of predicting PD risk, survival free of the disease and age at disease onset; however the specific models have not undergone independent validation. Here we tested the best proposed risk panel of 23 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two PD sample sets, with a total of 525 cases and 518 controls. By single marker analysis, only one marker was significantly associated with PD risk in one of our sample sets (rs6692804: P = 0.03). Multi-marker analysis using the reported model found a mild association in one sample set (two sided P = 0.049, odds ratio for each score change = 1.07) but no significance in the other (two sided P = 0.98, odds ratio = 1), a stark contrast to the reported strong association with PD risk (P = 4.64×10−38, odds ratio as high as 90.8). Following a procedure similar to that used to build the reported model, simulated multi-marker models containing SNPs from randomly chosen genes in a genome wide PD dataset produced P-values that were highly significant and indistinguishable from similar models where disease status was permuted (3.13×10−23 to 4.90×10−64), demonstrating the potential for overfitting in the model building process. Together, these results challenge the robustness of the reported panel of genetic markers to predict PD risk in particular and a role of the axon guidance pathway in PD genetics in general.
Sources of Systematic Risk

Using the restrictions implied by the heteroskedasticity of stock returns, we identify four factors in the U.S. industry returns. The first correlates highly with the market portfolio; the second is a portfolio of stocks that produce investment goods minus stocks that produce consumption goods; the third differentiates between cyclical and noncyclical stocks. The fourth, a portfolio of industries that produce input goods minus the rest of the market, is a robust predictor of excess returns on the market portfolio and bond returns. The extracted factors are shown to contain significant information about future macroeconomic and financial variables.
Analysis of Joint Multiband Sensing‐Time M‐QAM Signal Detection in Cognitive Radios

We analyze a wideband spectrum in a cognitive radio (CR) network by employing the optimal adaptive multiband sensing‐time joint detection framework. This framework detects a wideband M‐ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M‐QAM) primary signal over multiple nonoverlapping narrowband Gaussian channels, using the energy detection technique so as to maximize the throughput in CR networks while limiting interference with the primary network. The signal detection problem is formulated as an optimization problem to maximize the aggregate achievable secondary throughput capacity by jointly optimizing the sensing duration and individual detection thresholds under the overall interference imposed on the primary network. It is shown that the detection problems can be solved as convex optimization problems if certain practical constraints are applied. Simulation results show that the framework under consideration achieves much better performance for M‐QAM than for binary phase‐shift keying or any real modulation scheme.
Low-resource open vocabulary keyword search using point process models

The point process model (PPM) for keyword search is a wholeword parametric modeling framework based on the timing of phonetic events rather than the evolution of frame-level phonetic likelihoods. Recent progress in PPM training and decoding algorithms has yielded state-of-the-art phonetic search performance in high-resource settings, both in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency. In this paper, we consider PPM application to low-resource settings where the amount of transcribed speech is severely limited and the pronunciation dictionary is incomplete. By using (i) state-of-the-art deep neural network acoustic models to generate phonetic events and (ii) grapheme-to-phoneme conversion to generate pronunciations for out-of-vocabulary (OOV) keywords, we find the PPM system reaches state-of-the-art OOV search performance at a small computational cost. Moreover, due to their complementary methodologies, combining PPM outputs with the LVCSR baseline produces average relative ATWV improvements of 7% and 50% for in-vocabulary and OOV keywords, respectively (16% overall).
Radio-optically selected clusters of galaxies. II. The cluster sample

We present a sample of 171 candidate groups and clusters of galaxies at intermediate redshift over an area of ~550 square degrees at the South Galactic Pole selected by using optically identified radio sources from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey as tracers of dense environment. Out of these 171 candidates, 76 have a counterpart in the literature while 95 of them are previously unknown clusters. This paper presents the cluster selection technique, based on the search of excesses in the optical surface density of galaxies near identified radiogalaxies, and the first spectroscopic results aimed to confirm the presence of a cluster. Spectroscopy for 11 candidates led to the detection of 9 clusters at redshift in the range 0.13 - 0.3, with estimated velocity dispersions ranging from values typical of clusters to those of galaxy groups. These results show that this technique represents a powerful tool for the selection of homogeneous samples of intermediate redshift clusters over a wide range of richness.
Emergent Logical Structure in Vector Representations of Neural Readers

Reading comprehension is a question answering task where the answer is to be found in a given passage about entities and events not mentioned in general knowledge sources. A significant number of neural architectures for this task (neural readers) have recently been developed and evaluated on large cloze-style datasets. We present experiments supporting the existence of logical structure in the hidden state vectors of "aggregation readers" such as the Attentive Reader and Stanford Reader. The logical structure of aggregation readers reflects the architecture of "explicit reference readers" such as the Attention-Sum Reader, the Gated Attention Reader and the Attention-over-Attention Reader. This relationship between aggregation readers and explicit reference readers presents a case study in emergent logical structure. In an independent contribution, we show that the addition of linguistics features to the input to existing neural readers significantly boosts performance yielding the best results to date on the Who-did-What datasets.
The future of EU budget support : political conditions, differentiation and coordination

A t the end of 2011 the European Commission1 published a Communication on the future of EU budget support. This Communication introduces important changes, particularly for the EC as a budget support provider. The new Communication obliges the EC to open up its budget support approach to promote, democracy and human rights, alongside the goal of reducing poverty. It is perhaps no accident that this policy change comes at a time of increasing criticism by member states of the EC’s previous budget support strategy. While the EC can no longer afford to be ambivalent to democratic governance conditions in recipient countries, tying budget support more strictly to political conditions poses a number of significant challenges. Four interrelated messages have emerged from our analysis:
Parents’ use of mobile computing devices, caregiving, and the social and emotional development of children: A systematic review and exploratory study of expert opinion.

Adults in contemporary Australia are regular users of mobile devices including smartphones. These devices appear unobtrusive, but rapid uptake is presenting unique challenges for interpersonal relationships. Limited research exists about effects of parents’ use of mobile devices on parenting and young children. Available evidence considers effects of distraction and absorption in screen use on parents/parenting. There is a lack of consistency of theories and agreed outcome measures especially related to effects on children. Combining findings of a systematic review with expert opinion allows qualified theory development regarding potential effects of parents’ attention to devices on interactions between parents and infants.
Feasibility of Remote Real-Time Guidance of a Cardiac Examination Performed by Novices Using a Pocket-Sized Ultrasound Device

Background. The potential of pocket-sized ultrasound devices (PUDs) to improve global healthcare delivery is limited by the lack of a suitable imaging protocol and trained users. Therefore, we investigated the feasibility of performing a brief, evidence-based cardiac limited ultrasound exam (CLUE) through wireless guidance of novice users. Methods. Three trainees applied PUDs on 27 subjects while directed by an off-site cardiologist to obtain a CLUE to screen for LV systolic dysfunction (LVSD), LA enlargement (LAE), ultrasound lung comets (ULC+), and elevated CVP (eCVP). Real-time remote audiovisual guidance and interpretation by the cardiologist were performed using the iPhone 4/iPod (FaceTime, Apple, Inc.) attached to the PUD and transmitted data wirelessly. Accuracy and technical quality of transmitted images were compared to on-site, gold-standard echo thresholds. Results. Novice versus sonographer imaging yielded technically adequate views in 122/135 (90%) versus 130/135 (96%) (P < 0.05). CLUE's combined SN, SP, and ACC were 0.67, 0.96, and 0.90. Technical adequacy (%) and accuracy for each abnormality (n) were LVSD (85%, 0.93, n = 5), LAE (89%, 0.74, n = 16), ULC+ (100%, 0.94, n = 5), and eCVP (78%, 0.91, n = 1). Conclusion. A novice can perform the CLUE using PUD when wirelessly guided by an expert. This method could facilitate PUD use for off-site bedside medical decision making and triaging of patients.
Inhibition of Methyltransferases Accelerates Degradation of cFLIP and Sensitizes B-Cell Lymphoma Cells to TRAIL-Induced Apoptosis

Non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs) are characterized by specific abnormalities that alter cell cycle regulation, DNA damage response, and apoptotic signaling. It is believed that cancer cells are particularly sensitive to cell death induced by tumor necrosis factor α–related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL). However, many cancer cells show blocked TRAIL signaling due to up-regulated expression of anti-apoptotic factors, such as cFLIP. This hurdle to TRAIL’s tumor cytotoxicity might be overcome by combining TRAIL-based therapy with drugs that reverse blockages of its apoptotic signaling. In this study, we investigated the impact of a pan-methyltransferase inhibitor (3-deazaneplanocin A, or DZNep) on TRAIL-induced apoptosis in aggressive B-cell NHLs: mantle cell, Burkitt, and diffuse large B-cell lymphomas. We characterized TRAIL apoptosis regulation and caspase activation in several NHL-derived cell lines pre-treated with DZNep. We found that DZNep increased cancer cell sensitivity to TRAIL signaling by promoting caspase-8 processing through accelerated cFLIP degradation. No change in cFLIP mRNA level indicated independence of promoter methylation alterations in methyltransferase activity induced by DZNep profoundly affected cFLIP mRNA stability and protein stability. This appears to be in part through increased levels of cFLIP-targeting microRNAs (miR-512-3p and miR-346). However, additional microRNAs and cFLIP-regulating mechanisms appear to be involved in DZNep-mediated enhanced response to extrinsic apoptotic stimuli. The capacity of DZNep to target cFLIP expression on multiple levels underscores DZNep’s potential in TRAIL-based therapies for B-cell NHLs.
Ontology-based personalized search and browsing

As the number of Internet users and the number of accessible Web pages grows, it is becoming increasingly difficult for users to find documents that are relevant to their particular needs. Users must either browse through a large hierarchy of concepts to find the information for which they are looking or submit a query to a publicly available search engine and wade through hundreds of results, most of them irrelevant. The core of the problem is that whether the user is browsing or searching, whether they are an eighth grade student or a Nobel prize winner, the identical information is selected and it is presented the same way. In this paper, we report on research that adapts information navigation based on a user profile structured as a weighted concept hierarchy. A user may create his or her own concept hierarchy and use them for browsing Web sites. Or, the user profile may be created from a reference ontology by 'watching over the user's shoulder' while they browse. We show that these automatically created profiles reflect the user's interests quite well and they are able to produce moderate improvements when applied to search results.
Examination of the Greek Stock Market: An Emerging or a Developed One? An Econometric Approach

The present paper examines whether the Greek stock market has an emerging or a developed market status, using a sample of 25 national equity market indexes and the world market index for 14 years (1992-2006). Moreover there is an attempt to examine the diversification benefits of an international orientated investor when holding Greek equity, before and after the introduction of Euro to the Greek economy (2001). In order to find the level of integration of the Greek stock market to the developed ones, the Dynamic Conditional Correlations (DCC), (Engle, 2002) are calculated and compared, as well as, the Cointegration relationships between Greek market and all the other markets according to the Johansen (1988) approach. The diversification benefits are examined in the short-run by comparing the returns, volatility and correlations, while in the long-run by the number of common stochastic trend of the Greek market with the other markets and the speed of adjustment to this trend after a shock. The results give evidence that the Greek market was clearly acting as an emerging one during the most of the previous decade, while after the Euro introduction Greek equity market has gained in terms of integration to the developed ones and could be assigned within a group of European markets, not yet completely integrated to the giant global markets. Consequently, the diversification benefits have been minimized, although not completely eliminated.
Maximizing Differentiated Throughput in IEEE 802.11e Wireless LANs

The throughput performance of the distributed coordination function (DCF) of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol quickly degrades as the number of contending stations increases. To solve this problem, it has been shown recently that adaptive contention window modulation based on channel idle time tracking can be used, generating near optimal throughput. In this paper, we extend the approach for the IEEE 802.11e network, where different QoS classes are defined. We show how to find the class-specific optimal contention window sizes that yield the maximum aggregate throughput while maintaining the target throughput difference between classes
Friends and authors: Spontaneous co-composing in a writing workshop

In the mid-1980s, researchers began to study writers working in collaboration. Much of this research attended to what might be termed side-by-side composing: authors working on their own individual pieces and discussing them with others as needed. Others have studied co-composing—that is, multiple authors crafting a single text—describing the various aspects of these collaborations and their constraints and affordances. Nevertheless, few of these researchers have examined settings in which children spontaneously undertake co-composing. The study described here is a case analysis of a group of third-grade boys who chose to work together to write a superhero story over a period of six weeks. Mobilizing Bakhtin’s construct of heteroglossic discourse, the study explores interactions among the authors and aspects of their final product. Classroom observations, audio-recordings of co-composing sessions and student interviews, as well as the finished text served as the triangulated data for the study. Analysis showed that both the students’ interaction and the text that resulted from it was multi-voiced in nature. I argue here for a Writing Workshop model that foregrounds student choice and agency, rather than asserting that procedures are the primary drivers of success. In the context described here, such a model allowed students in this classroom to follow their own interests and work with peers who were supportive of those interests.