Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Explaining Rising Income Inequality in Germany, 1991-2010

In Germany, inequality of net equivalized income increased noticeably in the first half of the new millennium. We aim to identify the main drivers of this rise in income inequality since the early 1990s. We provide a broad overview of the circumstances under which inequality evolved, i.e. which changes in the German economy are most likely to provide an explanation for changes in income concentration. To explain the development of the distribution of net equivalized income we analyze changes in the distribution of market income as well as shifts in the effectiveness of public redistribution mechanisms. We find that cyclical and structural changes in the labor market, the increasing relevance of capital income as well as the decreasing effectiveness of the public mechanisms of income redistribution are the main explanatory factors for the development of income inequality. In addition to this, we discuss several issues that are of high relevance for the distribution of economic resources but are not directly covered in the analysis of net equivalized income. Most significantly, the design of the tax and social security contributions burden as well as the rising relevance of value-added taxes have exhibited negative redistributive effects for low income households.
A Proteasome Inhibitor, Bortezomib, Inhibits Breast Cancer Growth and Reduces Osteolysis by Downregulating Metastatic Genes

Purpose: The incidence of bone metastasis in advanced breast cancer (BrCa) exceeds 70%. Bortezomib, a proteasome inhibitor used for the treatment of multiple myeloma, also promotes bone formation. We tested the hypothesis that proteasome inhibitors can ameliorate BrCa osteolytic disease. Experimental Design: To address the potentially beneficial effect of bortezomib in reducing tumor growth in the skeleton and counteracting bone osteolysis, human MDA-MB-231 BrCa cells were injected into the tibia of mice to model bone tumor growth for in vivo assessment of treatment regimens before and after tumor growth. Results: Controls exhibited tumor growth, destroying trabecular and cortical bone and invading muscle. Bortezomib treatment initiated following inoculation of tumor cells strikingly reduced tumor growth, restricted tumor cells mainly to the marrow cavity, and almost completely inhibited osteolysis in the bone microenvironment over a 3- to 4-week period as shown by [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography, micro–computed tomography scanning, radiography, and histology. Thus, proteasome inhibition is effective in killing tumor cells within the bone. Pretreatment with bortezomib for 3 weeks before inoculation of tumor cells was also effective in reducing osteolysis. Our in vitro and in vivo studies indicate that mechanisms by which bortezomib inhibits tumor growth and reduces osteolysis result from inhibited cell proliferation, necrosis, and decreased expression of factors that promote BrCa tumor progression in bone. Conclusion: These findings provide a basis for a novel strategy to treat patients with BrCa osteolytic lesions, and represent an approach for protecting the entire skeleton from metastatic bone disease. Clin Cancer Res; 16(20); 4978–89. ©2010 AACR.
Increasing Self-efficacy through Inclusive Education for Autistic Children

The purpose of this study was to determine the selfconfidence of autistic children through inclusive education. The population of autistic elementary school students in the Kota Bengkulu with a sample of 37 students (SD) in the Kota Bengkulu was chosen randomly. The test results were analyzed using TTest correlated data. The results showed a significant relationship between the interaction between the inclusive education model and the initial skills of autistic students to improve the self-efficiency of autistic students. Inclusive education correlates with the correlation of self-efficacy = 0.887 with a significance probability <0.05. Keywords—self-efficacy; inclusive education; autistic children
Differences in students’ experiences of research involvement: study years and disciplines compared

ABSTRACT Integrating professional research into higher education is supposed to intellectually benefit students. However, the literature suggests that students in different academic disciplines experience differing research opportunities. Previous studies have shown how junior students of natural sciences have less opportunity to engage in research than students in ‘soft’ disciplines. To investigate research involvement, undergraduate students (N = 2192) of all seven faculties of a university filled out a survey that included the Research Experience Scale. This scale provides four types of potential research involvement comprised of passive involvement and three types of active research involvement. The categorisation of disciplines was based on the framework constructed by Anthony Biglan, with its distinction between hard/soft and life/nonlife criteria. All disciplines included in this study were applied, thereby excluding Biglan’s pure/applied distinction. A betweengroup analysis showed that each of the types of research involvement yielded a different pattern for students from different study years. The ‘students-as-researcher’ type in particular showed that students of lower study years in the life disciplines were systematically less involved than more senior students. These findings highlight the importance of more precise definitions of research involvement, as well as clearer distinctions between disciplinary differences in research and curriculum design.
Sour Grapes, Sweet Lemons, and the Anticipatory Rationalization of the Status Quo

Integrating theories of cognitive dissonance, system justification, and dynamic thought systems, the authors hypothesized that people would engage in anticipatory rationalization of sociopolitical outcomes for which they were not responsible. In two studies, the authors found that people adjusted their judgments of the desirability of a future event to make them congruent with its perceived likelihood, but only when the event triggered motivational involvement. In Study 1, a political survey administered to 288 Democrats, Republicans, and nonpartisans prior to the Bush-Gore presidential election manipulated the perceived likelihood that each candidate would win and measured the subjective desirability of each outcome. In Study 2, 203 undergraduate students rated the desirability of a large or small tuition increase or decrease that was low, medium, or high in likelihood. Under conditions evoking high motivational involvement, unfavorable as well as favorable outcomes were judged to be more desirable as their perceived likelihood increased.
Probelems: reflecting on a technology probe into peer involvement in cardiac rehabilitation

Given the widely acknowledged impact that social support has on health outcomes, we set out to investigate peerinvolvement in cardiac rehabilitation and explore the potential for technological support thereof. We planned to deploy a purpose built technology probe into a 10-week rehabilitation program. This paper presents the findings of the probes pilot study, where rejection of technology and reluctance to involve peers highlighted important considerations for the design of peerbased health promotion technologies and methodological considerations for the study of peer-involvement in behavioural change as well as pervasive health research in general.
THE EFECTS OF CAUSAL AMBIGUITY ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: An empirical analysis of the Spanish manufacturing firms

The resource-based view (RBV) has become the dominant paradigm in research in strategic management. According to this perspective, firms will achieve and sustain a position of competitive advantage over time only if their resources and capabilities are difficult to imitate. Traditionally, it has been recognised that causal ambiguity, by making it difficult for competitors to identify the capabilities on which a particular firm bases its competitive advantage, represents an effective protection mechanism helping the firm to obtain superior performance. Recently, researchers have unearthed evidence that the effects of causal ambiguity also could be extend to the interior of the firm itself, hampering the diffusion of its own capabilities among its managers. In this case, the existence of causal ambiguity will have a negative impact on firm performance. In this paper we study both effects using a sample of 258 Spanish manufacturing firms. With this in mind and on the basis of previous literature, we proposed a model that contains two hypothesis and we show that causal ambiguity exerts a double-edged influence on firm performance. On the positive side, in its effect on the firm’s competitors, and on the negative, in its effect on the firm’s managers, with this second effect being stronger.
An Analysis of Selection Procedures with Particular Attention Paid to Proportional and Bolzmann Selection. In

(1994). A statistical mechanical formulation of the dynamics of genetic algorithms. In Terence C. 74 The analysis in this paper gave a detailed insight in the working mechanism of selection schemes. Although the comparison of the loss of diversity and selection variance is helpful, for a complete understanding of the local behavior of an Evolutionary Algorithm the variation operator (crossover and mutation) has also to be considered.73 Fitness distributions allow an uniied view of the selection schemes and enable several, up to now independently and isolated obtained aspects of selection schemes to be derived with one single methodology. Some interesting features of selection schemes could beproven, e.g., the concatenation of several tournament selections (Theorem 3.3) and the equivalence of binary tournament and linear ranking (Theorem 6.1). Important c haracteristics of selection schemes, like selection intensity, selection variance, and loss of diversity w ere derived. The selection intensity w as used to obtain a convergence prediction of the simple Genetic Algorithm with uniform crossover optimizing the ONEMAX function. The comparison of the loss of diversity and the selection variance based on the selection intensity allowed for the rst time \second order" properties of selection schemes to be compared. This gives a well grounded basis for deciding which selection scheme is applicable, assuming that for a particular problem the impact of these properties on the opti
The role of information quality in TAM for product review on bulletin board

Technology acceptance model (TAM) has populated in the information system (IS) researches and it has also been applied to online consumer behavior in the literature. This paper aims to further investigate the role of information quality on online product review. It primarily depicts consumer acceptance of such uses with the TAM constructs. And on top of that, concerns of Consumer Research are addressed. This combination forms an integrated theoretical framework of online consumer behavior. Specifically, this research examines how information quality of bulletin board, or alike, influences online consumers' intention to review product on that site. It is a questionnaire-based empirical study. Analysis with a sample of 716 shows reasonably good fit in a structural equation model (SEM) on the proposed hypotheses. It thus provides a more vigorous cause-and-effect view and is a significant step towards a better understanding of consumer behavior online.
Oral Interaction in the EFL Classroom: The Effects of Instructional Focus and Task Type on Learner Affect

Little is known about the effects of different instructional approaches on learner affect in oral interac- tion in the foreign language classroom. In a randomized experiment with Dutch pre-vocational learners (N = 147), we evaluated the effects of 3 newly developed instructional programs for English as a foreign language (EFL). These programs differed in instructional focus (form-focused vs. interaction strategies- oriented) and type of task (pre-scripted language tasks vs. information gap tasks). Multilevel analyses re- vealed that learners’ enjoyment of EFL oral interaction was not affected by instruction, that willingness to communicate (WTC) decreased over time, and that self-con dence was positively affected by com- bining information gap tasks with interactional strategies instruction. In addition, regression analyses revealed that development in learners’ WTC and enjoyment did not have predictive value for achieve- ment in EFL oral interaction, but that development in self-con dence did explain achievement in EFL oral interaction in trained interactional contexts.
Ultra-High-Throughput Screening of an In Vitro-Synthesized Horseradish Peroxidase Displayed on Microbeads Using Cell Sorter

The C1a isoenzyme of horseradish peroxidase (HRP) is an industrially important heme-containing enzyme that utilizes hydrogen peroxide to oxidize a wide variety of inorganic and organic compounds for practical applications, including synthesis of fine chemicals, medical diagnostics, and bioremediation. To develop a ultra-high-throughput screening system for HRP, we successfully produced active HRP in an Escherichia coli cell-free protein synthesis system, by adding disulfide bond isomerase DsbC and optimizing the concentrations of hemin and calcium ions and the temperature. The biosynthesized HRP was fused with a single-chain Cro (scCro) DNA-binding tag at its N-terminal and C-terminal sites. The addition of the scCro-tag at both ends increased the solubility of the protein. Next, HRP and its fusion proteins were successfully synthesized in a water droplet emulsion by using hexadecane as the oil phase and SunSoft No. 818SK as the surfactant. HRP fusion proteins were displayed on microbeads attached with double-stranded DNA (containing the scCro binding sequence) via scCro-DNA interactions. The activities of the immobilized HRP fusion proteins were detected with a tyramide-based fluorogenic assay using flow cytometry. Moreover, a model microbead library containing wild type hrp (WT) and inactive mutant (MUT) genes was screened using fluorescence-activated cell-sorting, thus efficiently enriching the WT gene from the 1:100 (WT:MUT) library. The technique described here could serve as a novel platform for the ultra-high-throughput discovery of more useful HRP mutants and other heme-containing peroxidases.
Studies in Neural Tube Defects

In the NIH Collaborative Perinatal Project, a prospective study of over 53,000 pregnant women and their offspring, 71 single-born children (13.33/10,000) were found to have a non-syndromal neural tube defect (NTD). A family history was present in only one case. The group of individuals with NTD was compared to a group of 400 randomly selected non-malformed control infants. Of over 50 maternal factors studied the following showed significant association with NTD in the offspring: diabetes mellitus; organic heart disease; lung disease; and diuretic, antihistamine, and sulfonamide use. The interval between the termination of the immediately previous pregnancy and the start of the proband pregnancy was significantly shorter in mothers of NTD children than in mothers of control infants. The risk for NTD was also significantly increased if the immediately previous pregnancy was a spontaneous abortion. There was no increased risk for NTDs among sibs of children with major malformations such as tracheo-esophageal “dysraphism,” cleft lip/palate, or renal agenesis. NTDs are apparently etiologically heterogeneous.
For Online Publication : Supplementary Appendix for Pirates of the Mediterranean

Since p = β T −1 b in the final bargaining period, we can compute the upper bound on the remaining types such that selling to any possible type (by setting p = β T −2 b) is optimal according to the optimization problem: max p p · F (X) − F (p/β T −2 − βδb 1 − βδ) F (X) + F (p/β T −2 − βδb 1 − βδ) F (X) (β T −2 v + β T −1 δb). Therefore, optimal p in the final period satisfies: (1) v + βδb − p/β T −2 (1 − βδ) f (p/β T −2 − βδb 1 − βδ) − F (p/β T −2 − βδb 1 − βδ) + F (X) ≤ 0. Setting p = β T −2 b (and using F (b) = 0) allows us to determine the upper bound on remaining types: X = F −1 [(b − v 1−βδ)f (b)]. From the way we solved for X, this upper bound on remaining types in the final period can also be interpreted as the minimum type such that if types were hypothetically distributed over [X, ¯ b], the game would end one period earlier than
Support vector random field based approach towards object based classification of remotely sensed imagery

Remote sensing techniques are widely used for land cover classification and related analyses; however the availability of high resolution images have limited the accuracy of pixel based approaches. In this paper, we have analyzed the feasibility of incorporating contextual information to a support machine and have evaluated its performances with reference to the traditional approaches. Accuracy improvement of the proposed approach may be attributed to the effectiveness in combining spatial and spectral information.
Dynamic time warping fusion for the retrieval of similar patient cases represented by multimodal time-series medical data

Comparing a patient case with other cases having a similar progress in time can prove valuable for medical decision making. However, as the population under study increases, the complexity of such comparisons can exceed the capabilities of human medical experts, especially when multiple parameters are involved. In this paper we propose a novel computational approach to aid the comparison of multimodal medical data obtained from different time-series patient examinations. The similarity between the patient cases is assessed by a fusion scheme involving the estimation of multiple dynamic time warping distances between temporal sequences of observed medical parameter values. The results obtained from its application on a reference dataset of hepatic infections demonstrated high precision even for low recall rates. Thus, the effectiveness of the proposed approach which is generic renders it applicable on various medical domains.
Toward Scalable Learning with Non-Uniform Class and Cost Distributions: A Case Study in Credit Card Fraud Detection

Very large databases with skewed class distributions and non-uniform cost per error are not uncommon in real-world data mining tasks. We devised a multi-classifier meta-learning approach to address these three issues. Our empirical results from a credit card fraud detection task indicate that the approach can significantly reduce loss due to illegitimate transactions.
Contributions to the Transformation Entropy Change and Influencing Factors in Metamagnetic Ni-Co-Mn-Ga Shape Memory Alloys

Ni-Co-Mn-Ga ferromagnetic shape memory alloys show metamagnetic transition from ferromagnetic austenite to paramagnetic (or weak-magnetic) martensite for a limited range of Co contents. The temperatures of the structural and magnetic transitions depend strongly on composition and atomic order degree, in such a way that combined composition and thermal treatment allows obtaining martensitic transformation (MT) between any magnetic state of austenite and martensite. The entropy change ΔS measured in the magnetostructural transition comprises a magnetic contribution which depends on the type and degree of magnetic order of the related phases. Consequently, both the magnetization jump across the MT (ΔM) and ΔS are composition and atomic order dependent. Both ΔS and ΔM determine the effect of applied magnetic fields on the MT, hence knowledge and understanding of their behavior can help to approach the best conditions for magnetic field induced MT and related effects. In previous papers, we have reported findings regarding the behavior of the transformation entropy in relation to composition and atomic order in Ni50−xCoxMn25+yGa25−y (x = 3-8, y = 5-7) alloys. In the present paper we will review our recent results, summarizing the key findings and drawing general conclusions regarding the magnetic contribution to ΔS and the effect of different factors on the magnetic and structural properties of these metamagnetic alloys.
The growth of earnings instability in the U

An orthodontic appliance in the form of a tying attachment for securing an elastic band or thread to a tooth which includes a conically shaped base wall and an inverted frusto-conically shaped upstanding wall coacting to form a ridge for engagement against a band, wherein the attachment is structured so that it may be efficiently and securely welded to the band.
Epidemiological aspects of suicide attempts among Moroccan children

Suicidal behavior among children has significantly increased in Morocco. We conducted a study on the epidemiological aspect to propose a treatment strategy. Descriptive retrospective study over a period of 3 years (April 2012-April 2015) involving children who visited pediatric medical emergencies of the Children Hospital of Rabat after an autolysis attempt. We observed epidemiological parameters, history, social and family context, the means used, the presumed cause, clinical manifestation, and the management. 66 patients were identified. A female predominance was found (sex =15). The average age was 13 years old. This was a first episode in 97% of cases. Psychiatric history was found in 6 patients. The causes of suicide attempt were unidentified in 65%. The most frequent cause was family conflict (35%). The most frequent method was pharmaceutical drug ingestion (54.4%). Children were asymptomatic (57.6%). Neurological manifestations (30%) were most frequent. Digestive symptoms (12%) and hemodynamic (3%) were also discovered. Patients were hospitalized in a general pediatric service 92.4% of the times, admitted to intensive care 4.5% of the times, and two patients refused to be hospitalized. The treatment consisted of gastric lavage (18%) supplemented by symptomatic measures. The outcome was favorable in 95.4% of cases. We recorded 2 deaths by rat poison poisoning. All patients were advised in writing after leaving to follow up with a psychological treatment. Suicide attempts are the result of an ill being, mostly among children living in a family with conflict. Upstream treatment is essential to identify children at risk. Additionally, a psychiatric care in hospital is essential to avoid recurrences.
AUTOMATIC TRANSCRIPTION OF POLYPHONIC PIANO MUSIC USING A NOTE MASKING TECHNIQUE

This paper describes a polyphonic note detection system incorporating a simple masking technique that can accurately transcribe chords and polyphonic piano music. The system, developed in MATLAB, will take input files in . wav format. The music is segmented by using Note Average Energy (NAE) onset detection. Onsets are used to segment the music into note windows which are then analysed using the FFT. Following compilation of the frequency peaks in each note window, an iterative masking procedure is used to detect and successively extract the notes. The masking procedure uses a database of note masks which are compiled from multiple note examples using both monophonic and polyphonic examples.