Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Adult Metabolic Syndrome and Impaired Glucose Tolerance Are Associated With Different Patterns of BMI Gain During Infancy

OBJECTIVE—The purpose of this study was to describe patterns of infant, childhood, and adolescent BMI and weight associated with adult metabolic risk factors for cardiovascular disease. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—We measured waist circumference, blood pressure, glucose, insulin and lipid concentrations, and the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III definition) in 1,492 men and women aged 26–32 years in Delhi, India, whose weight and height were recorded every 6 months throughout infancy (0–2 years), childhood (2–11 years), and adolescence (11 years–adult). RESULTS—Men and women with metabolic syndrome (29% overall), any of its component features, or higher (greater than upper quartile) insulin resistance (homeostasis model assessment) had more rapid BMI or weight gain than the rest of the cohort throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence. Glucose intolerance (impaired glucose tolerance or diabetes) was, like metabolic syndrome, associated with rapid BMI gain in childhood and adolescence but with lower BMI in infancy. CONCLUSIONS—In this Indian population, patterns of infant BMI and weight gain differed for individuals who developed metabolic syndrome (rapid gain) compared with those who developed glucose intolerance (low infant BMI). Rapid BMI gain during childhood and adolescence was a risk factor for both disorders.
Financial Development and Economic Growth: Evidence from 10 New European Union Members

This paper reviews the main features of the banking and financial sector in 10 new European Union members, and then examines the relationship between financial development and economic growth in these countries by estimating a dynamic panel model over the period 1994–2007. The evidence suggests that the stock and credit markets are still underdeveloped in these economies and that their contribution to economic growth is limited owing to a lack of financial depth. By contrast, a more efficient banking sector is found to have accelerated growth. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A step toward GPS/INS personal navigation systems: real-time assessment of gait by foot inertial sensing

In this paper, we develop a system for which applications in the field of personal navigation are planned. In the current version, the system embodies a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and an inertial measurement unit (IMU), composed of two dual-axis accelerometers and one single-axis gyro. The IMU is positioned at a subject's foot instep, and it is intended to produce estimates of some gait parameters, including stride length, stride time, and walking speed. Data from GPS and IMU are managed by a DSP-based control box. The computations performed by the DSP processor allow to detect subsequent foot contacts by a threshold-based method applied to gyro signal, and to reconstruct the trajectory of the foot instep by numerical strapdown integration. Features of human walking dynamics are incorporated in the algorithm to enhance the estimation accuracy against errors due to sensor noise and integration drift. All computations are performed by the DSP processor in real-time conditions. The foot sensor performance is assessed during outdoor level walking trials. The traveled distance estimated by inertial dead-reckoning is compared with the estimate produced by GPS in experimental conditions where GPS can be used as a reference source for accurate absolute positioning. Results show the remarkable accuracy achieved by foot inertial sensing.
Role of Ox-PAPCs in the Differentiation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) and Runx2 and PPARγ2 Expression in MSCs-Like of Osteoporotic Patients

Background Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) can differentiate into osteoblasts and adipocytes and conditions causing bone loss may induce a switch from the osteoblast to adipocyte lineage. In addition, the expression of Runx2 and the PPARγ2 transcription factor genes is essential for cellular commitment to an osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation, respectively. Modified lipoproteins derived from the oxidation of arachidonate-containing phospholipids (ox-PAPCs: POVPC, PGPC and PEIPC) are considered important factors in atherogenesis. Methodology We investigated the effect of ox-PAPCs on osteogenesis and adipogenesis in human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs). In particular, we analyzed the transcription factor Runx2 and the PPARγ2 gene expression during osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation in absence and in presence of ox-PAPCs. We also analyzed gene expression level in a panel of osteoblastic and adipogenic differentiation markers. In addition, as circulating blood cells can be used as a “sentinel” that responds to changes in the macro- or micro-environment, we analyzed the Runx2 and the PPARγ2 gene expression in MSCs-like and ox-PAPC levels in serum of osteoporotic patients (OPs). Finally, we examined the effects of sera obtained from OPs in hMSCs comparing the results with age-matched normal donors (NDs). Principal findings Quantitative RT-PCR demonstrated that ox-PAPCs enhanced PPARγ2 and adipogenic gene expression and reduced Runx2 and osteoblast differentiation marker gene expression in differentiating hMSCs. In OPs, ox-PAPC levels and PPARγ2 expression were higher than in NDs, whereas Runx2 was lower than in ND circulant MSCs-like. Conclusions Ox-PAPCs affect the osteogenic differentiation by promoting adipogenic differentiation and this effect may appear involved in bone loss in OPs.
Delivery ratio in two-hop relay MANETs with limited message lifetime and redundancy

A lot of work has been done to model and analyze the performances of two-hop relay algorithm and its variants. However, the delivery ratio, especially under limited message lifetime, has been largely neglected in literature, which is not only of significant importance for delay sensitive applications (where a message beyond some delay limit will typically be dropped) but also of practical interests for general MANET scenarios (where mobile nodes are usually both energy-constrained and buffer storage-limited). In this paper, we study the delivery ratio of a generalized two-hop relay with limited message lifetime and redundancy. In particular, a finite-state absorbing Markov chain-based theoretical framework is first developed to model the complicated message delivery process under the considered relay algorithm. Closed-form expressions are then derived for the message delivery ratio under any given message lifetime, where the important interference, medium contention and traffic contention issues are carefully incorporated into analysis. Finally, extensive simulations are conducted to validate the theoretical framework and corresponding delivery ratio results.
[Regulating factors for microglial activation].

Microglia, residential macrophages in the central nervous system, can release a variety of factors including cytokines, chemokines, etc. to regulate the communication among neuronal and other types of glial cells. Microglia play immunological roles in mechanisms underlying the phagocytosis of invading microorganisms and removal of dead or damaged cells. When microglia are hyperactivated due to a certain pathological imbalance, they may cause neuronal degeneration. Pathological activation of microglia has been reported in a wide range of conditions such as cerebral ischemia, Alzheimer's disease, prion diseases, multiple sclerosis, AIDS dementia, and others. Nearly 5000 papers on microglia can be retrieved on the Web site PubMed at present (November 2001) and half of them were published within the past 5 years. Although it is not possible to read each paper in detail, as many factors as possible affecting microglial functions in in vitro culture systems are presented in this review. The factors are separated into “activators” and “inhibitors,” although it is difficult to classify many of them. An overview on these factors may help in the development of a new strategy for the treatment of various neurodegenerative diseases.
Promoting Authoritarianism Abroad

Recent years have seen efforts by several states to promote authoritarianism abroad, garnering the attention of foreign policy analysts-and raising a number of questions. What determines the success or failure of these efforts? How does the relationship between international and domestic politics play out? Do states comply with external pressures for ideological reasons, or primarily to attain material benefits? How does promoting authoritarianism differ from promoting democracy? Addressing these questions, Rachel Vanderhill draws on the experiences of Russia, Venezuela, and Iran to provide an illuminating comparative analysis.
Eclipse of the Public Corporation

The publicly held corporation has outlived its usefulness in many sectors of the economy. New organizations are emerging. Takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and other going-private transactions are manifestations of this change. A central source of waste in the public corporation is the conflict between owners and managers over free cash flow. This conflict helps explain the prominent role of debt in the new organizations. The new organizations' resolution of the conflict explains how they can motivate people and manage resources more effectively than public corporations. (HBR McKinsey Award Winner)
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Research Department Staff Report 319 Expectation Traps and Monetary Policy *

Why is inflation persistently high in some periods and low in others? The reason may be absence of commitment in monetary policy. In a standard model, absence of commitment leads to multiple equilibria, or expectation traps, even without trigger strategies. In these traps, expectations of high or low inflation lead the public to take defensive actions, which then make accommodating those expectations the optimal monetary policy. Under commitment, the equilibrium is unique and the inflation rate is low on average. This analysis suggests that institutions which promote commitment can prevent high inflation episodes from recurring. * We thank three anonymous referees and Orazio Attanasio for useful comments. We are particularly grateful to Michael Woodford for detailed comments that substantially improved our work. Chari and Christiano thank the National Science Foundation for support. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Cleveland, or Minneapolis or the Federal Reserve System.
A Combinatorial Optimization Model for Transmission of Job Information through Contact Networks

A combinatorial network model is constructed to describe the information structure of job finding in a homogeneous job market. A fundamental distinction is drawn between strong and weak contacts: strong contacts are assumed to have strict priority as recipients of information about the existence of job vacancies, while maintenance of a given strong contact requires more time than does maintenance of a weak contact. Facing a limited time-budget, each individual confronts a tradeoff between these two possible ways of investing time. In the model presently investigated, each individual is assumed to develop his contacts so as to maximize probability of getting some new job in the event that he loses his present job. Concepts of both stability and optimality are defined. It is found that if the probability of becoming jobless is low (u <<1), then a situation where all individuals choose only weak ties ("all-weak network") will be stable and will be a Pareto optimum under the maximizing behavior assumed. Also, all-weak networks are the only Pareto optima in this case. For u near 1, a different situation obtains: now networks containing only strong ties will be stable and all-weak networks will be unstable. In this second limiting case, however, stability and optimality do not coincide: all-strong networks are not Pareto optimal.
Estimating benefits for dairy production systems from sustainable irrigation practices: Intervention and adjustment in Victorian Land and Water Management Plans

Approaches to valuing regional responses in plant productivity from investment in natural resource management are reviewed. The usefulness of data from surveys for estimating marginal physical product is discussed. Since investment reduces declining trends in productivity, an estimate of value marginal product based on based on milk price has seemed appropriate. But as forage is an increasingly substitutable intermediate product in dairy production systems its value will not exceed that of the least cost substitute. Qualified estimates indicate the extent of overestimation of benefits produced by some previous approaches. Implications for natural resource management policy are considered.
Upper and Lower Limb Muscle Architecture of a 104 Year-Old Cadaver

Muscle architecture is an important component to typical musculoskeletal models. Previous studies of human muscle architecture have focused on a single joint, two adjacent joints, or an entire limb. To date, no study has presented muscle architecture for the upper and lower limbs of a single cadaver. Additionally, muscle architectural parameters from elderly cadavers are lacking, making it difficult to accurately model elderly populations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to present muscle architecture of the upper and lower limbs of a 104 year old female cadaver. The major muscles of the upper and lower limbs were removed and the musculotendon mass, tendon mass, musculotendon length, tendon length, pennation angle, optimal fascicle length, physiological cross-sectional area, and tendon cross-sectional area were determined for each muscle. Data from this complete cadaver are presented in table format. The data from this study can be used to construct a musculoskeletal model of a specific individual who was ambulatory, something which has not been possible to date. This should increase the accuracy of the model output as the model will be representing a specific individual, not a synthesis of measurements from multiple individuals. Additionally, an elderly individual can be modeled which will provide insight into muscle function as we age.
A preliminary map of market periodicities in Ghana.

A well-known feature of many of the market sites at which exchange takes place in West Africa is their periodicity of occurrence; thus, buyers and sellers converge on a given location each day, or every second, third, or nth day. ' For some daily markets, there may be a peaking of activity according to a given time schedule, so that an overlay of periodicity exists on an otherwise daily market schedule.2 While there is room for debate on the reasons for the existence of a certain periodicity in a given area, the rationale for periodic markets is well understood. The theory of market periodicity has been articulated by Stine and draws on the notion of the
What can partitioning do for your data warehouses and data marts?

Efficient query processing is a critical requirement for data warehousing systems as decision support applications often require minimum response times to answer complex, ad-hoc queries having aggregations, multi-ways joins over vast repositories of data. This can be achieved by fragmenting warehouse data. The data fragmentation concept in the context of distributed databases aims to reduce query execution time and facilitates the parallel execution of queries. In this paper, we propose a methodology for applying the fragmentation technique in a data warehouse star schema to reduce the total query execution cost. We present an algorithm for fragmenting the tables of a star schema. During the fragmentation process, we observe that the choice of the dimension tables used in fragmenting the fact table plays an important role on overall performance. Therefore, we develop a greedy algorithm in selecting "best" dimension tables. We propose an analytical cost model for executing a set of OLAP queries on a fragmented star schema. Finally, we conduct some experiments to evaluate the utility of the fragmentation for efficiently executing OLAP queries.
HIV/AIDS, Risk Aversion and Intertemporal Choice

This study analyses the relation between perceived health status and intertemporal choice. We use data from experiments with real monetary rewards conduEted among students in South Africa to estimate risk and time preferences. These experimental data, based on muitiple price lists developed by Coller & Williams (1999), Holt & Laury (2002), and Harrison et al. (2002, 2005), show that HIV+ agents and participants that perceive to have a high HIV contraction risk are less risk-averse. Although the latter group displays higher discount rates, HP positive agents seem to have substantially lower discount rates, indicating longer time horizons in spite of their lowered life expectancy. However, we show that direct estimates of discount rates can be seriously biased estimators of the pure rate of time preference when other factors than just the pure rate of time preference are not considered simultaneously. We correct for differential mortality risk, risk aversion and differences in anticipated future marginal utility increases and price in these factors when calculating pure rates of time preference from observed discount rates. Once these factors are taken into account, HIV+ agents’ time preferences conform to expectations.
Wald for non-stopping times: the rewards of impatient prophets

Let $X_1,X_2,\ldots$ be independent identically distributed nonnegative random variables. Wald's identity states that the random sum $S_T:=X_1+\cdots+X_T$ has expectation $\mathbb{E} T \cdot \mathbb{E} X_1$ provided $T$ is a stopping time. We prove here that for any $1<\alpha\leq 2$, if $T$ is an arbitrary nonnegative random variable, then $S_T$ has finite expectation provided that $X_1$ has finite $\alpha$-moment and $T$ has finite $1/(\alpha-1)$-moment. We also prove a variant in which $T$ is assumed to have a finite exponential moment. These moment conditions are sharp in the sense that for any i.i. d. sequence $X_i$ violating them, there is a $T$ satisfying the given condition for which $S_T$ (and, in fact, $X_T$) has infinite expectation.An interpretation of this is given in terms of a prophet being more rewarded than a gambler when a certain impatience restriction is imposed.
Prevention of traumatic dental lesions: cognitive research on the role of mouthguards during sport activities in paediatric age.

AIM This study reports a personal contribution and the analysis of the most recent literature on prevention of dentoalveolar traumas, and the lack of knowledge and use of protective oral devices in children (7-12 years old) practicing sports. Different oral protection devices will be illustrated, and among them the types more suitable for the investigated age group. MATERIALS AND METHODS Recently we conducted a survey on a sample of 300 children between 8 and 11 years of age practicing basketball, to assess the frequency of oral traumas, correlated predisposing factors, level of knowledge of mouthguards and possible frequency of use of such devices. RESULTS From the survey it emerged that only 30 subjects knew about mouthguards (15 of them received the information from their dentist) and none of them received information from the coach or within the sport club. Furthermore, only 3 subjects (1% of the sample) wore a mouthguard during practice. Our study and other literature contributions highlight the total lack of information of the practitioners, especially the young ones, and the unconcern for these problems by the organisations (clubs) where sports are practiced. A cycle of 2 brief conferences about orofacial trauma prevention and use of mouthguard was administered. Regarding the type of mouthguard more suitable to adolescent athletes, the semi-individual types of new generation seem to be the best choice, since they can be refitted multiple times in order to adapt to the dental and skeletal growth. Conclusion We can conclude reasserting the absolute need of providing information about the risks of orofacial trauma related with basketball and other contact sport activities, and to promote the use of mouthguards as a primary protective measure among athletes, which will considerably reduce the social costs associated with such trauma occurrences.
Supramodal neural processing of abstract information conveyed by speech and gesture

Abstractness and modality of interpersonal communication have a considerable impact on comprehension. They are relevant for determining thoughts and constituting internal models of the environment. Whereas concrete object-related information can be represented in mind irrespective of language, abstract concepts require a representation in speech. Consequently, modality-independent processing of abstract information can be expected. Here we investigated the neural correlates of abstractness (abstract vs. concrete) and modality (speech vs. gestures), to identify an abstractness-specific supramodal neural network. During fMRI data acquisition 20 participants were presented with videos of an actor either speaking sentences with an abstract-social [AS] or concrete-object-related content [CS], or performing meaningful abstract-social emblematic [AG] or concrete-object-related tool-use gestures [CG]. Gestures were accompanied by a foreign language to increase the comparability between conditions and to frame the communication context of the gesture videos. Participants performed a content judgment task referring to the person vs. object-relatedness of the utterances. The behavioral data suggest a comparable comprehension of contents communicated by speech or gesture. Furthermore, we found common neural processing for abstract information independent of modality (AS > CS ∩ AG > CG) in a left hemispheric network including the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), temporal pole, and medial frontal cortex. Modality specific activations were found in bilateral occipital, parietal, and temporal as well as right inferior frontal brain regions for gesture (G > S) and in left anterior temporal regions and the left angular gyrus for the processing of speech semantics (S > G). These data support the idea that abstract concepts are represented in a supramodal manner. Consequently, gestures referring to abstract concepts are processed in a predominantly left hemispheric language related neural network.
Egalitarianism and Growth

Are competitive wage premia an obstacle to growth? The answer of the architects of the Scandinavian 'model' in the 1950s and 1960s was in the affirmative. By punishing expansive and growth enhancing sectors of the economy, competitive wage premia imposed an unwarranted drag on the rate of structural change. The authors formalize this intuition using a two-sector endogenous growth model, considering both open and closed economy cases. They also show that egalitarian pay compression, combined with active labor market policies, works in the same way as an industrial policy of subsidizing sunrise industries. Copyright 1993 by The editors of the Scandinavian Journal of Economics.