Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prevalence of selected chronic conditions: United States, 1990-1992.

This report presents an update of the prevalence of selected chronic conditions in the United States. Its purpose is to provide prevalence data by age, sex and age, race and age, family income, and geographic region for major chronic condition systems. It further assesses the percent of selected conditions that cause activity limitation, the percent for which a physician was consulted, and the percent that caused hospitalization. Conditions with the highest prevalence and those causing the most disability days are also analyzed. Trends in prevalence rates for the conditions with highest prevalence are examined as well. Information for this report is based on data collected during the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for the years 1990, 1991, and 1992. This is a continuing nationwide survey of households for which a probability sample of the civilian noninstitutionalized population of the United States is interviewed by the U.S. Bureau of the Census regarding the health and other characteristics of each member of the household. The sample for the years 1990-92 was composed of 142,638 households containing 368,075 persons. Each household was administered one of six of the chronic conditions system lists. Deformities or orthopedic impairments was the most frequent chronic condition reported with almost 35 million conditions. Other conditions high in prevalence were chronic sinusitis, arthritis, and high blood pressure with annual averages of 33.7, 31.8, and 27.6 million conditions, respectively. Mental retardation and multiple sclerosis caused the highest percents of activity limitation among persons afflicted, 87.5 percent and 69.4 percent, respectively. Deformities and other orthopedic impairments, arthritis, and heart disease caused the highest numbers of restricted activity days and bed disability days per year, whereas, malignant neoplasms of the lung, bronchus, and other respiratory sites, caused the highest number of restricted activity days per year, per condition reported, 96.1 days. In little more than a decade, the prevalence rate from asthma has increased almost 50 percent and the rate from chronic bronchitis has increased 46 percent.
Renminbi's Potential to Become a Global Currency

This paper is a tentative endeavor to delineate the potential of the renminbi to become a global currency. It first analyzes the critical economic, financial and policy attributes that are required to support a currency to gain an international role. It then examines whether China has the potential to acquire these attributes. The paper concludes by offering some provisional observations on the implications for Asia and the global economy, should the renminbi evolve into a world currency in the coming decades.
Deepening Integration in an Enlarged EU: A Club–theoretical Perspective

Abstract The paper focuses on the problem of a simultaneous deepening and enlargement of the EU from the perspective of club theory. The EU can be perceived as a club that provides several non–rival but excludable goods to its members. Contrary to purely collective goods, for which the club size is infinite, club theory starts from the assumption that membership size is an endogenous variable, as is the provision level of club goods. In order to enhance the quality of EU governance, it is concluded that the increasing heterogeneity of EU members requires a systematic initiative of creating clubs within the club. The treaty agreed at the Nice summit in December 2000 has been as insufficient to meet these requirements as will be the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe.
Factors Influencing or Discouraging Secondary School Students' FFA Participation.

Modern adolescents are faced with a variety of choices regarding how to spend their free time. As recruitment and increased student participation continues to be a major priority of the National FFA Organization, it is essential to explore the reasons why students make the choice to become or not to become a member of FFA. This study was a part of a larger, collective case study of members and non– members in school–based agricultural education programs located in ten small town, rural, and urban fringe schools across Illinois. The purpose of the study was to explore what influences students’ decision to join or not join the National FFA Organization. Students in this collective case study participated in semi–structured focus group interviews, individual interviews, and completed questionnaires. Four themes emerged as reasons to join FFA and three themes emerged as major reasons non–members elected not to participate in the FFA. Implications and recommendations concerning marketing of and recruitment for FFA programs were discussed.
Financial Overconfidence Over Time: Foresight, Hindsight, and Insight of Investors

Overconfidence leads to increased trading activity, higher risk taking, and less diversification. In a panel survey of online brokerage clients, we ask for stock market and portfolio expectations and derive several overconfidence measures from the responses. Overconfidence is present in our sample in various forms. By matching survey data with investors' actual transactions and portfolio holdings, we find an influence of overplacement on trading activity, of overprecision and overestimation on degree of diversification, and of overprecision and overplacement on risk taking. We explore the evolution of overconfidence over time and identify a role of past success and hindsight on subsequent degree of overconfidence.
A test for the relationship between a time‐varying marker and both recovery and progression with missing data

For clinical studies of chronic diseases, patients are followed to determine whether treatment results in either improvement or decline in their clinical status. During periodic exams, laboratory specimens are collected that are believed to reflect both the progression and improvement in the disease status. Often patients miss visits and return with a changed disease status, resulting in interval‐censored laboratory markers and indicators of disease status. The goal of this paper is to propose a single test that would evaluate the relationship between a longitudinal marker and clinical progression or recovery when missing visits result in interval‐censored covariate and outcome data. We apply our test to evaluate the relationship between treatment compliance and progression and remission of renal disease in diabetic patients. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Corporate Governance and Labor Relations

This article begins with the premise that since the corporation involves a symbiotic relationship between labor and capital, a single-minded focus on shareholder value is likely to be shortsighted, and some degree of employee influence on corporate governance has the potential to increase an organization's efficiency and value. But the set of findings and implications that emerge from the author's analysis is a complicated one. On the one hand, "moderate" levels of employee ownership (for example, the 6% ownership of the average American ESOP) are associated with increases in corporate productivity and values as well as worker morale and productivity. On the other hand, majority employee ownership and corporate ownership and governance systems like "co-determination" that give labor a major say on governance issues often lead to worker-management alliances that end up hurting the firm's investors-and, in the longer run, the workers themselves- by reducing competitiveness. The author ends with a call for a balanced governance system that, while aiming to maximize the total value of the enterprise, seeks to encourage the participation and emotional allegiance of workers-and indeed all important corporate stakeholders. Copyright Copyright (c) 2009 Morgan Stanley.
Matchmaking and Testing for Exponentiality in the M/G/∞ Queue

Customers arrive sequentially at times x 1 0. The Z-variables all have the same distribution Q. We are interested in situations where the data are incomplete in the sense that only the order statistics associated with the departure times x i + Z i are known, or that the only available information is the order in which the customers arrive and depart. In the former case we explore possibilities for the reconstruction of the correct matching of arrival and departure times. In the latter case we propose a test for exponentiality.
Association between Left-Handedness and Gastrointestinal Symptoms

Objective: Several studies have shown associations between left-handedness and several chronic diseases such as bronchial asthma and inflammatory bowel disease. Perceptual responses within the brain-gut axis play a crucial role in the development of the cardinal symptoms of functional gastrointestinal (GI) diseases, including dyspepsia and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The aim of this study was to determine the association between left-handedness and GI symptoms or diseases. Methods: 2,447 Japanese who underwent a routine health check-up were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire regarding age, gender, writing handedness and GI symptoms experienced over the past 3 months, including heartburn, acid regurgitation, epigastric pain, postprandial fullness, abdominal pain/discomfort, nausea and/or chest pain. Symptoms were positive when their frequency was 2 to 3 days per month or more. Diagnosis of dyspepsia and IBS was performed according to the Rome III Integrative Questionnaire. Results: Left-handedness was observed in 177 (7.2%) subjects. Early satiation, abdominal pain/fullness and postprandial fullness were less commonly observed in left-handed individuals. After adjustment for age and sex, left-handedness was found to be significantly associated with decreased OR for early satiation (OR = 0.43; 95% CI: 0.23–0.78). There were no significant associations between left-handedness and GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), dyspepsia or IBS. Conclusions: This study demonstrated a significant negative association between left-handedness and early satiation. The findings suggest that cerebral lateralization may affect the development of GI symptoms.
Testing for rational expectations in the UK National Lottery

The concept of rational expectations has typically been assumed, without testing, in the analysis of consumer demand and market efficiency in betting markets, including betting on lottery games. Lottery games offer an excellent opportunity to test how participants process the information that is available to them. Using the UK National Lottery as our particular case, we find that participants, in general, efficiently process available information. Specifically, they act as if they can, on average, forecast the level of sales for a given drawing.
The Relationship Between Psychological Type and Professional Orientation Among Technology Education Teachers

Technological change in the work force is a critical problem in business and industry, precipitating the quick obsolescence and emergence of job skills and training (Fairhurst, 1990). Cornish (1977) describes the tremendous change that has occurred within our society as convulsive. Change is also perhaps, the most appropriate term to describe the reformation that is currently taking place in the field of technology education. Changes in the goals, activities, instructional methodologies, and types of instructional programs within technology education has caused considerable debate within the profession. Indeed, the instructional field of technology education has undergone radical changes in past years. Ever since the pioneering curricular efforts of William Warner in the late 1940’s technology education has progressively strived to move beyond a product-based curriculum to a more process-based curriculum that strives to encourage and develop higher-order thinking in students (Wicklein, 1993). The decade of the 1990s promises to bring even more significant changes to the field of technology education. The development of the Conceptual Framework for Technology Education (Savage & Sterry, 1991) presented both a theoretical and practical approach to understanding the instructional goals and objectives of technology education. Further, current efforts to develop curricula that integrates technology education with science and mathematics is currently viewed as a significant focus of change for the field (LaPorte & Sanders, 1993; Wicklein & Schell, 1995) that will have serious impact on the field of technology education in the coming years (LaPorte & Sanders, 1993; Scarborough, 1993; Wicklein & Schell, 1995). The debate over changes that have been made in the field of technology education and the current direction of the field has created a certain degree of
Experiments in Environmental Economics and Some Close Relatives

It is not only the great number of papers written on environment economics that make it worth dealing with this special branch of experimental research, but the environmental problem in all its facets seems to serve as a catalyst for identifying some methodological problems of the experimental method. For this reason, we will not only try to give an overview of recent experiments in environmental economics but also add some thoughts on the methodological implications of this work. We identify three direct connecting factors for the experimental method and environmental economics. First, social dilemmas are, in many cases, at the core of environmental problems. Experiments are able to test theoretical hypotheses for individual behavior in such social dilemma situations. The second connecting factor comes from the field of applied experimental work and can be characterized as the testbedding of institutional arrangements for the solution of environmental problems. The last direct application of experimental methods to environmental economics concerns the individual evaluation of environmental resources. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2006.
The new kid in the forest: the impact of China's resource demand on Gabon's tropical timber value chain

This dissertation is anchored in the disruptive impact of China’s resource-based economic expansion over the last two decades. Whilst the country’s economic growth follows traditional patterns of development, the size of China’s population challenges the small-country assumption inherent in many macroeconomic trade models. The recent commodity boom and the seeming reversal of commodity exporting countries’ terms of trade are a result of China’s non-marginal impact of consumption. This thesis uses examples from the tropical timber industry in general and primary data from Gabon in particular to examine the impact of Chinese consumption of tropical timber forest products on a producer industry in the South. The global value chain framework is used as a method to study the likely changes in the organisation of production and trade. The research examines the possible re-direction of tropical timber trade flows away from the OECD towards China. It can be expected that the access to the Chinese market is defined over different standards, as buying decisions in traditional consumer countries vary from Chinese ones based on their stages of industrialisation and per capita incomes. The analysis also investigates whether the shift in markets leads to changes in the division of labour, the income distribution and the usage of domestic factors of production in Gabon. Additionally, the growing presence of Chinese producers in Southern resource industries has the potential to accentuate structural changes in the organisation of production, because Chinese actors’ activities are said to be concentrated in the extractive rather than the processing stages of production, often in disregard of socio-environmental consequences. Research results obtained in this dissertation, with respect to possible changes in the organisation of production and trade, plus knowledge about the impact of China’s significant consumption of natural resources on global commodity prices and the terms of trade movement, enable us to draw conclusions with respect to theoretical discussions about the role of natural resources in economic development, the implications for industrial and economic policy formulation, and the global value chain framework as a research method.
Common Divisors, Payout Persistence, and Return Predictability

In the finance and accounting literature, the use of a common divisor in the dependent and independent variables of ordinary least-squares regressions is commonplace. What goes less recognized, however, is that their use induces spurious correlation between the regression variables and invalidates standard testing procedures. This paper analyses the common divisor problem by outlining analytical results concerning the expected R2 and providing a simulation procedure that generates test statistics from which critical values can be drawn. To illustrate the procedure, we re-investigate payout yield return predictability findings that have appeared in the literature and show that the results are spurious.
From the Cover: L-Carnitine via PPAR&ggr;- and Sirt1-Dependent Mechanisms Attenuates Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition and Renal Fibrosis Caused by Perfluorooctanesulfonate

We have previously reported that perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) causes cell apoptosis in renal tubular epithelial cells (RTCs). Here, we extend our findings and provide evidence of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT)-associated renal fibrosis caused by PFOS and the protection by l-carnitine. Our results demonstrate that PFOS increased the expression of EMT and renal injury biomarkers (eg, N-cadherin, vimentin, Snail, Kim1, and Lcn2). In addition, PFOS caused EMT induction through Sirt1-mediated PPARγ deacetylation and inactivation. l-carnitine reversed the EMT induction caused by PFOS and alleviated PFOS-mediated increases in cell migration by reactivating PPARγ through the inhibition of Sirt1 activity. The critical role of Sirt1 in this process was validated by using Sirt1 overexpression, resveratrol (a pharmacologic activator of Sirt1), nicotinamide (a Sirt1 inhibitor) and siSirt1. Nicotinamide and siSirt1, but not Sirt1 overexpression and resveratrol, alleviated PFOS-mediated EMT induction, suggesting that increased Sirt1 activity contributed to the alterations. Furthermore, through PPARγ overexpression and pharmacologic interventions, we validated the crucial role of increased PPARγ deacetylation caused by aberrant increased Sirt1 activity in RTC transformation. Similar to PPARγ overexpression, rosiglitazone (a PPARγ agonist) alleviated the effects of PFOS on the EMT-related features, whereas GW9662 (a PPARγ antagonist) mimicked the effects. The protective effect of l-carnitine was also verified in a mouse model of chronic PFOS exposure, in which decreased EMT biomarker levels and renal fibrosis by l-carnitine were observed in Western blot and histological analyses. Accordingly, l-carnitine alleviated EMT-associated renal fibrosis caused by PFOS through a Sirt1- and PPARγ-dependent mechanism.
The short-run performance of JASDAQ companies and venture capital involvement before and after flotation

This study revealed that the level of venture capitalist involvement in the pre-flotation as well as the post-flotation period influenced the short-run performance of JASDAQ companies in Japan. We detected that JASDAQ companies differed in several ways from NASDAQ and EASDAQ companies. JASDAQ companies tended to be larger in size. Moreover, JASDAQ companies were older than NASDAQ or EASDAQ companies when they selected an initial public offering (IPO). In part, the IPO decision was influenced by the subsequent desire of owners to realize capital gains and exit via personal share sales. Further, we found that JASDAQ companies with high levels of venture capital investment reported inferior short-run performance with regard to share value.
Study on the application of the time-compressed speech in children.

PURPOSE To analyze the performance of children without alteration of central auditory processing in the Time-compressed Speech Test. METHODS This is a descriptive, observational, cross-sectional study. Study participants were 22 children aged 7-11 years without central auditory processing disorders. The following instruments were used to assess whether these children presented central auditory processing disorders: Scale of Auditory Behaviors, simplified evaluation of central auditory processing, and Dichotic Test of Digits (binaural integration stage). The Time-compressed Speech Test was applied to the children without auditory changes. RESULTS The participants presented better performance in the list of monosyllabic words than in the list of disyllabic words, but with no statistically significant difference. No influence on test performance was observed with respect to order of presentation of the lists and the variables gender and ear. Regarding age, difference in performance was observed only in the list of disyllabic words. CONCLUSION The mean score of children in the Time-compressed Speech Test was lower than that of adults reported in the national literature. Difference in test performance was observed only with respect to the age variable for the list of disyllabic words. No difference was observed in the order of presentation of the lists or in the type of stimulus.
An assessment of teicoplanin use and monitoring serum levels in a Chinese teaching hospital.

OBJECTIVE To validate a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for serum teicoplanin measurement and use the method for clinical monitoring of teicoplanin levels to analyze the clinical application of teicoplanin. METHODS 55 patient profiles were collected and analyzed for the clinical teicoplanin application. 10 critically ill patients of the 55 cases were monitored for teicoplanin trough concentration using the HPLC method. RESULTS The modified HPLC method exhibited excellent linearity, with correlation coefficient r = 0.9995. The intra-day and inter-day coefficients of variation were less than 10%. The lower limit of detection of teicoplanin was 5.63 mg/l. The recovery of teicoplanin was above 90%. Of the 55 patients in this study, there were 42 patients without load-dosing. There were only 29 patients treated with teicoplanin documented Gram-positive infections by etiological diagnoses. In the 10 patients with teicoplanin serum trough concentration monitoring, all cases received a loading dose of 400 mg every 12 h for 3 doses, and the mean trough concentration of teicoplanin was 10.82 ± 4.51 mg/l. The mean trough levels were 13.04 ± 6.23 mg/l in 4 patients with microbiological eradication and improvement of symptoms of diseases and 9.34 ± 2.61 mg/l in 6 patients with persistence of previous clinical infectious symptoms, respectively. CONCLUSION The modified HPLC method is robust, highly reproducible and suited to monitor the concentration of teicoplanin. In critically ill Chinese patients, we should consider more appropriate loading doses and evaluate the relationship between teicoplanin trough concentration and the efficacy using microbiological and clinical parameters.