Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantile Regression

W e say that a student scores at the tth quantile of a standardized exam if he performs better than the proportion t of the reference group of students and worse than the proportion (1–t). Thus, half of students perform better than the median student and half perform worse. Similarly, the quartiles divide the population into four segments with equal proportions of the reference population in each segment. The quintiles divide the population into five parts; the deciles into ten parts. The quantiles, or percentiles, or occasionally fractiles, refer to the general case. Quantile regression as introduced by Koenker and Bassett (1978) seeks to extend these ideas to the estimation of conditional quantile functions—models in which quantiles of the conditional distribution of the response variable are expressed as functions of observed covariates. In Figure 1, we illustrate one approach to this task based on Tukey’s boxplot (as in McGill, Tukey and Larsen, 1978). Annual compensation for the chief executive officer (CEO) is plotted as a function of firm’s market value of equity. A sample of 1,660 firms was split into ten groups of equal size according to their market capitalization. For each group of 166 firms, we compute the three quartiles of CEO compensation: salary, bonus and other compensation, including stock options (as valued by the Black-Scholes formula at the time of the grant). For each group, the bow-tie-like box represents the middle half of the salary distribution lying between the first and third quartiles. The horizontal line near the middle of each box represents the median compensation for each group of CEOs, and the
Implications for the Australian Economy of Strong Growth in Asia

Strong growth in Asia, particularly in China, has had a profound impact on the Australian economy over the past decade. Most notable so far has been the boom in the resource sector, with commodity prices and hence Australia's terms of trade rising to historically high levels over a number of years. This has been accompanied by a sizeable appreciation of the exchange rate. While the terms of trade have passed their peak, the substantial investment in productive capacity of the resource sector in recent years is expected to provide a large boost to the production and exports of resources in coming years. In this paper we describe how the pattern of structural adjustment to the positive terms of trade shock has, to date, proceeded broadly in line with that suggested by a simple theoretical model that distinguishes between three broadly defined sectors: the resource sector, the 'other tradable' sector and the non-tradable sector. In particular, relative wages and prices adjusted in a way that facilitated the reallocation of factors of production towards the resource sector. While not all parts of the economy have benefited, the process of adjustment thus far has occurred relatively smoothly in a macroeconomic sense; inflation has remained within the target range, or not too far from it, unemployment has remained relatively low and output has grown at close to trend rates. This stands in stark contrast to some earlier episodes of terms of trade booms in Australia. We argue that macroeconomic adjustment to the current terms of trade shock has been facilitated by the appreciation of the exchange rate, the anchoring of inflation expectations and labour market dynamics whereby wage pressures in industries or regions experiencing strong conditions associated with the boom in resource investment have not spilled over to parts of the economy experiencing weaker conditions.
Human liver UDP-glucuronosyltransferase isoforms involved in the glucuronidation of 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin

1. The human liver UDP-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT) isoforms involved in the glucuronidation of 7-ethyl-10-hydroxycamptothecin (SN-38), the active metabolite of irinotecan (CPT-11), have been studied using microsomes from human liver and insect cells expressing human UGTs (1A1, 1A3, 1A4, 1A6, 1A9, 2B7, 2B15). 2. The glucuronidation of SN-38 was catalysed by UGT1A1, UGT1A3, UGT1A6 and UGT1A9 as well as by liver microsomes. Among these UGT isoforms, UGT1A1 showed the highest activity of SN-38 glucuronidation at both low (1 µM) and high (200 µM) substrate concentrations. The ranking in order of activity at low and high substrate concentrations was UGT1A1 > UGT1A9 > UGT1A6> UGT1A3 and UGT1A1 > UGT1A3 > UGT1A6 ≥ UGT1A9, respectively. 3. The enzyme kinetics of SN-38 glucuronidation were examined by means of Lineweaver-Burk analysis. The activity of the glucuronidation in liver microsomes exhibits a monophasic kinetic pattern, with an apparent K m and V max of 35.9 µM and 134pmol min -1 mg -1 protein, respectively. The UGT isoforms involved in SN-38 glucuronidation could be classified into two types: low- K m types such as UGT1A1 and UGT1A9, and high- K m types such as UGT1A3 and UGT1A6, in terms of affinity toward substrate. UGT1A1 had the highest V max followed by UGT1A3. V max of UGT1A6 and UGT1A9 were approximately 1/9 to 1/12 of that of UGT1A1. 4. The activity of SN-38 glucuronidation by liver microsomes and UGT1A1 was effectively inhibited by bilirubin. Planar and bulky phenols substantially inhibited the SN-38 glucuronidation activity of liver microsomes and UGT1A9, and/or UGT1A6. Although cholic acid derivatives strongly inhibited the activity of SN-38 glucuronidation by UGT1A3, the inhibition profile did not parallel that in liver microsomes. 5. These results demonstrate that at least four UGT1A isoforms are responsible for SN-38 glucuronidation in human livers, and suggest that the role and contribution of each differ substantially.
Patterns of ‘public‐school markets’ in the Finnish comprehensive school from a comparative perspective

The article examines school choice in the context of the Finnish, publicly owned and governed comprehensive school system, the ‘named public‐school markets’, and compares findings to similar studies done in other countries. Parental choice is used in addition to traditional catchment areas and has now settled in the educational policy of big cities since its introduction in Finland in the mid 1990s. The focus of this article is on the extent and direction of pupils' preferences between the schools in relation to the characteristics of the schools in order to understand what kind of patterns have been formed along with the school choice. At the turn of the year 2000, half of the age group transferring to the 7th grade applied for a place in an other than catchment area school in the capital city, and on average one‐third of those in the other four big cities. The local public school markets touched every school in the urban areas. The schools were divided into popular, rejected, and balanced schools on the basis of net gains in request flows. A detailed analysis of the preferences between schools is presented in a map. Patterns of operation of the local school markets in the four case cities showed astoundingly similar features to those reported in studies conducted in other countries.
From Land Use Right to Land Development Right: Institutional Change in China's Urban Development

There has been a fundamental institutional change during the transformation from the centrally controlled system to a market-oriented economy in China since the early 1980s. The socialist land use right as an institution of the out-going central planning system became an obstacle to the emerging land market for urban redevelopment, although land leasing as a new institution had created a real estate market primarily for the development of greenfield sites. From a case study of a district in Shanghai, it is discovered that rapid urban land redevelopment since 1992 has been greatly facilitated by the informal institution of a land development right. The land development right unlocks the process of land redevelopment in the central city, while the existing land users' land use right is taken care of during the gradual transition. Land use efficiency is improved to a great extent through land redevelopment to uses of higher productivity. However, the informal and insecure institution of the land development right induces hasty land redevelopment. Assisted by a capricious land use planning regime, the land development right yields sub-optimal development. Clarification of property rights is the goal for further institutional change.
A model to predict the improvement of automated blood culture bacterial detection by doubling platelet sample volume

BACKGROUND: Some transmissions of bacterial infection from platelet (PLT) transfusion have occurred since introduction of automated blood culturing of apheresis PLTs. The majority of these cases involved false‐negative culture results in which slow‐growing Staphylococcus organisms were implicated. This study analyses the projected benefit in detecting slow growing organisms by increasing sample volume from 4 to 8 mL.
THINK MANAGER, THINK MALE

Examines a recent managerial sex typing research project. Results show that it is still very difficult for women to reach top managerial jobs and those who do are very much in the minority. The “glass ceiling” appears to be still intact although women are gaining some “middle” ground. Posits that “think manager – think male” should become “think manager – think qualified person! ”
Cluster analysis of activity‐time series in motor learning

Neuroimaging studies of learning focus on brain areas where the activity changes as a function of time. To circumvent the difficult problem of model selection, we used a data‐driven analytic tool, cluster analysis, which extracts representative temporal and spatial patterns from the voxel‐time series. The optimal number of clusters was chosen using a cross‐validated likelihood method, which highlights the clustering pattern that generalizes best over the subjects. Data were acquired with PET at different time points during practice of a visuomotor task. The results from cluster analysis show practice‐related activity in a fronto‐parieto‐cerebellar network, in agreement with previous studies of motor learning. These voxels were separated from a group of voxels showing an unspecific time‐effect and another group of voxels, whose activation was an artifact from smoothing. Hum. Brain Mapping 15:135–145, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Inter- And Intra-Regional Wage Inequalities In The Uk: An Examination Of The Sources Of Uk Wage Inequalities And Their Evolution

Wage inequalities in the UK and elsewhere have increased substantially over the last two decades and have remained in historically high levels throughout the 1990s. In this paper we perform a number of decompositions of wage inequalities and their changes and try to locate the sources of these inequalities. By far, changes in returns to skills, towards more inequality, are the main determinant of the marked increase in wage inequalities. Nevertheless, more than two thirds of these inequalities are found to be located within the same region and gender and occupational group, with the implication that other factors, possibly education and experience, among others, determine the level of wage inequalities. However, cross-regional differences in wage inequalities are by lot determined by differences in the occupational composition of the work-force and in the returns to skills. International and macroeconomic factors offer little to the explanation of cross-regional wage inequalities and their importance for overall inequalities.
La segregación laboral en las regiones españolas durante el periodo 1996-2010

En el presente trabajo se analiza la evolucion de la segregacion por genero en el mercado de trabajo espanol entre 1996 y 2010, haciendo especial enfasis en las distintas pautas que han seguido las Comunidades Autonomas. Para ello, se utilizan dos medidas: la primera es el Indice de Karmel y MacLachlan y la segunda es la que utiliza las denominadas «curvas de segregacion» sobre la cuales se aplica el Indice de Gini. Los resultados obtenidos reflejan una profunda heterogeneidad en la segregacion a nivel regional, asi como una distinta participacion de un genero y otro en la evolucion de la segregacion.
Climatic Variability and Uruguay River Flows

Abstract The relationship between the climatic characteristics of a river basin and its hydrological response is very well understood. River flow is the synthesis of a broad range of phenomena such as rainfall, evapotranspiration, vegetation, soil, and geomorphological characteristics. This paper analyzes the Uruguay River in terms of its flow variability and the possible influences of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon over a transition region between the subtropical and the mid-latitude regimes. A number of relationships were found between the warm, cold and neutral ENSO phases and the maximum floods of the Uruguay river. The conclusion of this work enhances knowledge of the climatic characteristics of the Uruguay river basin, and it may also be useful for flood forecasting.
An Analysis of Determinants of Corporate Financial Performance: Evidence from the Bucharest Stock Exchange Listed Companies

The purpose of this paper is to investigate potential factors of influence on corporate financial performance. The analysis was conducted on Romania’s case and included a sample of 46 companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, within 2009-2013 period. In the first part of the analysis the companies have been classified using factor analysis and further, based on it, we have performed a cluster analysis using SAS program. Subsequently, selected variables were tested using multivariate regression models for unbalanced panel data. The results are contradictory regarding the impact of company size. Based on the accounting approach we obtained a positive impact determined by the number of employees, while based on the market approach, performance is negatively correlated with total assets. In terms of indebtedness a negative relationship was revealed. At the same time, the relationship regarding transparency and disclosure in reporting was not statistically validated.
Getting the Incentives Right: Backfilling and Biases in Executive Compensation Data

We document that backfilling in the ExecuComp database introduces a data-conditioning bias that can affect inferences and make replicating previous work difficult. Although backfilling can be advantageous due to greater data coverage, if not addressed, the oversampling of firms with strong managerial incentives and higher subsequent returns leads to a significant upward bias in abnormal compensation, pay-for-performance sensitivity, and the magnitudes of several previously established relations. The bias also can lead to one misinterpreting the appropriate functional form of a relation and whether the data support one compensation theory over another. We offer methods to address this issue. Received May 12, 2014; editorial decision May 10, 2016 by Editor David Hirshleifer.
The Impact on Absenteeism and Quits of Profit-Sharing and other Forms of Employee Participation

Using data on 52 engineering and metal working firms in the United Kingdom in 1983–84, the authors of this study investigate how employee participation affects absenteeism and quit rates. Included in the explanatory model are measures of union presence, formal schemes for employee involvement in decision-making, employees' perceived participation in decision-making (based on interviews), and the extent of employee financial participation through profit-sharing, share ownership, and fringe benefits. The results indicate that firms with participation schemes had significantly lower average absenteeism and quit rates than firms without such schemes.
Product Market Linkages, Manager Quality, and Mutual Fund Performance

Mutual funds typically invest a disproportionately large portion of their portfolio in one industry (main industry). We present a simple theoretical model to demonstrate that better mutual fund managers make larger investments in the important supplier/customer industries related to the main industry. Consistent with our theory, empirical tests on a large sample of mutual funds show that investment in related industries is positively associated with fund performance and plays a more significant role in explaining fund performance than investment in the main industry. Furthermore, the positive relation between main investment and fund performance obtains only when related investment is high. Copyright 2013, Oxford University Press.
Spatial-Frequency Thresholds for Configural and Featural Discriminations in Upright and Inverted Faces

Face recognition is thought to rely more on the relative positions of face features (configural information) than on the appearance of the individual face parts (featural information). It also seems to rely on a specific band of spatial frequencies (SFs). In this study, we measured the SFs needed for processing configural and featural information using the method of constant stimuli in combination with a simultaneous-matching paradigm. Stimuli were two-octave-wide bandpass-filtered upright and inverted faces that contained either featural or configural modifications. SF thresholds for featural and configural processing were calculated by interpolating between discrimination accuracy scores. Low-pass and high-pass thresholds for featural and configural processing in upright faces were approximately equal, whereas for inverted faces, the thresholds were closer to the middle of the spectrum for configural processing relative to featural processing. Thus, a broader band of SFs, one that overlapped more with the middle of the frequency spectrum, was needed for configural processing than for featural processing in inverted faces. Our findings emphasise the importance of a narrow mid-range band of frequencies for both configural and featural encoding in upright faces and suggest that configural information is extracted less effectively in inverted faces.
'White coat' hypertension in children.

BACKGROUND Research with ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) clearly demonstrates the importance of identifying "white coat" hypertension before making the diagnosis of hypertension. While the existence of white coat hypertension has been documented in adults, it is unknown whether this phenomenon is present during childhood. Therefore, the purposes of this study were to determine whether white coat hypertension exists in children with a positive family history of essential hypertension; and if it exists, to compare 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure patterns among normotensive, white coat hypertensive, and hypertensive children. METHODS One hundred fifty-nine children (aged 5 to 15 years) participated in the study. Based on office systolic and diastolic measurements and 24-hour ABPM, subjects were placed into one of three groups: normotensive, white coat hypertensive, and hypertensive. RESULTS Forty-four percent of 34 subjects with systolic blood pressures greater than or equal to 95th percentile were reclassified as white coat hypertensive; 56% remained hypertensive. Group comparisons of 24-hour ABPM patterns showed significant differences between groups. Also, the ABPM patterns of white coat hypertensive patients were significantly different from those of normotensive patients. CONCLUSIONS This study documented the existence of white coat hypertension in children and showed that white coat hypertensive children were significantly different from normotensive and hypertensive children on most comparisons of 24-hour ABPM data. Also, when age and sex were controlled, heavier children had a more significant chance of having elevated systolic blood pressure than normal-weight children, regardless of their race, height, or body mass index.
Major fragment of soluble peptidoglycan released from growing Bordetella pertussis is tracheal cytotoxin

Bordetella pertussis is known to release a factor which promotes the loss of ciliated respiratory epithelium and copurifies with a soluble peptidoglycan (PG) fragment termed tracheal cytotoxin (TCT). The objective of this study was to determine whether pertussis organisms turn over and release PG derivatives in addition to TCT. B. pertussis Tohama (phase III) was grown in liquid Stainer-Scholte medium containing [3H]diaminopimelic acid (DAP) to label PG specifically, washed to remove free label, and suspended in fresh medium without [3H]DAP. Molecular sieve chromatography of supernatants obtained from such cultures revealed a single included peak of 3H, the elution volume of which corresponded roughly to a disaccharide peptide monomer standard (ca. 10(3) daltons). This material (i) contained [3H]DAP in acid-hydrolyzable linkage, (ii) comigrated with 1,6-anhydro-N-acetylmuramic acid-containing disaccharide peptides on paper chromatography, (iii) was resistant to degradation by mild alkali, and (iv) was indistinguishable from authentic TCT by high-voltage paper electrophoresis and two reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography systems. Together, the data suggest that B. pertussis releases a markedly homogeneous set of PG fragments, consisting principally of TCT, and that TCT is possibly a nonreducing, anhydromuramic acid-containing fragment or a cyclic PG derivative.