Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Demographics of Military Children and Families

Since the advent of the all-volunteer force in the 1970s, marriage, parenthood, and family life have become commonplace in the U.S. military among enlisted personnel and officers alike, and military spouses and children now outnumber service members by a ratio of 1.4 to 1. Reviewing data from the government and from academic and nonacademic research, Molly Clever and David R. Segal find several trends that distinguish today’s military families. Compared with civilians, for example, service members marry younger and start families earlier. Because of the requirements of their jobs, they move much more frequently than civilians do, and they are often separated from their families for months at a time. And despite steady increases since the 1970s in the percentage of women who serve, the armed forces are still overwhelmingly male, meaning that the majority of military parents are fathers. Despite these distinguishing trends, Clever and Segal’s chief finding is that military families cannot be neatly pigeonholed. Instead, they are a strikingly diverse population with diverse needs. Within the military, demographic groups differ in important ways, and the service branches differ from one another as well. Military families themselves come in many forms, including not only the categories familiar from civilian life—two-parent, single-parent, and so on—but also, unique to the military, dual-service families in which both parents are service members. Moreover, military families’ needs change over time as they move through personal and military transitions. Thus the best policies and programs to help military families and children are flexible and adaptable rather than rigidly structured.
Social Action Programs and Social Funds: A Review of Design and Implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa

African governments responded to the marked deterioration in the living standards of the poor which occurred in the 1980s by adding explicit poverty alleviation objectives to their development policies. Interventions such as social action programs (SAPs) and social funds (SFs) were designed and implemented to protect the poor and some vulnerable groups from the harmful effects of the economic situation and from the transitory negative effects of economic reform. Using the experience of 12 SAPs and SFs in sub-Saharan Africa this study explores issues surrounding these interventions. Chapter 1 defines SAPs and SFs and describes the status quo in terms of the historical perspective the African context the content of the SAPs and SFs reviewed and disbursement performances. Chapter 2 discusses conceptual issues such as the justification for SAP/SFs in relation to the economic reform program in socioeconomic political and institutional terms; the conformity of these interventions with macroeconomic and sectoral policies; the short-term impact vs. the longterm capacity building and subproject sustainability; and the use of SAP/SFs as support for private sector development decentralization and participation. The third chapter addresses the political economy of SAP/SFs first in terms of the African political context then in terms of central-level implementation and local-level issues. Chapter 4 considers the institutional issues of design and implementation for SFs of working with nongovernmental organizations of implementation an coordination mechanisms for SAPs of targeting and monitoring and of ways to improve targeting and monitoring. The final chapter describes sector activities in terms of a multisectoral approach employment creation components provision of basic social services and a participatory approach. After a conclusion annexes provide data on SAP/SFs in general and specific information on the 12 SAP/SFs which provided the basis for this review.
Market Discounts and Shareholder Gains for Placing Equity Privately

Despite selling at substantial discounts, private placements of equity are associated with positive abnormal returns. The authors find evidence that discounts reflect information costs borne by private investors and abnormal returns reflect favorable information about firm value. Results are consistent with the role of private placements as a solution to the Myers and Majluf (1984) underinvestment problem and with the use of private placements to signal undervaluation. The authors also find some evidence of anticipated monitoring benefits from private sales of equity. For the smaller firms that comprise their sample, information effects appear to be relatively more important than ownership effects. Copyright 1993 by American Finance Association.
Econometric modelling of housing assistance and labour market participation (Research paper)

The analysis in this paper examines the effect of housing assistance programs on aspects of labour market behaviour and outcomes in Australia. The relationship between housing assistance and labour market behaviour is a key concern of policy makers. In fact, a guiding principle of the current agreement between the federal and state governments concerning the provision of housing assistance programs is the need to ensure that 'housing assistance supports access to employment and promotes social and economic participation' (Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement 2003, Schedule 1). The analysis provides evidence on this link by considering how current policy settings influence labour market outcomes for participants in housing assistance programs.
Stepwise behavior of free recovery processes after diffused vacuum arc extinction

The objective of this paper is to gain insight into free recovery processes in vacuum interrupters after diffused vacuum arcs extinction. A sub-microsecond voltage impulse, which peaked at 90 kV with a rising time of 150 ns) (rate of rise 480 kV/μs), were electronically controlled to apply upon a switching gap of a vacuum interrupter at a predetermined interval after a power frequency current zero. Based on the breakdown voltages at different intervals after arc extinction, we can obtain the free recovery behavior of the vacuum interrupter. The contact materials under study included Cu, CuCr25 and CuCr50. The contacts were butttype, and the contact diameters were 12 and 25 mm, respectively. The arc current peaked at 2.1 kA with a frequency of 50 Hz and the arcing time was ~9 ms. The results show the free recovery behavior stepped from ~28 kV to ~70 kV at ~4 μs after arc extinction for the three kinds of contact materials with the two contact diameters given. By calculation of the dissipation of metal vapor density and ion density, we conclude that the decay of ions, rather than metal vapor, may be the main reason for the stepwise behavior of the free recovery process after diffused vacuum arcs extinction.
Application of a Mixed Imaging Sequence for MR Imaging Characterization of Human Breast Disease

Single slice MR images were obtained from 9 normal breasts, 17 breasts with benign tumors, and 11 breasts with malignant tumors using an interleaved (mixed) spin echo (SE) inversion-recovery (IR) imaging sequence. SE and IR MR images were synthesized with variable repetition, echo and inversion times from the mixed sequence data. These images were used to qualitatively evaluate the contrast possibilities available when imaging the breast with MR imaging. Proton T1 and T2 relaxation times were determined for normal breast tissues and malignant and benign breast tumors from pure T1 and T2 images calculated using the mixed sequence data. The mean T1 value in benign tumors of 1049.02 ± 40.31 was found to be significantly longer (p < 0.0001) than the mean value of malignant tumors (876.09 ± 27.83) and normal tissues (795.64 ± 21.12). The value of T2 in benign tumors (89.15 ± 8.33) was significantly longer (p < 0.01) than the value of T2 in normal tissues (62.82 ± 4.06). The mixed sequence can be applied to improve image contrast between malignant tumors, benign tumors, and normal tissues of the breast and can potentially differentiate between these tissues in vivo.
Identification of Optimal Reference Genes for Normalization of RT-qPCR Data in Cancerous and Non-Cancerous Tissues of Human Uterine Cervix

ABSTRACT This study aimed to identify the most stably expressed reference genes from a panel of 32 candidate genes for normalization of reverse transcription-quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction data in cancerous and non-cancerous tissues of human uterine cervix. Overall, PUM1, YWHAZ, and RPLP0 were identified as the most stably expressed genes in paired cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. The results were further stratified by the state of malignancy of the tissues, histopathological type of the cancer, and the human papillomavirus-type.
Alignment of “Phrase Accent” Lows in Dutch Falling Rising Questions: Theoretical and Methodological Implications

In the first part of this study, we measured the alignment (relative to segmental landmarks) of the low F0 turning points between the accentual fall and the final boundary rise in short Dutch falling-rising questions of the form Do you live in [place name]? produced as read speech in a laboratory setting. We found that the alignment of these turning points is affected by the location of a postaccentual secondary stressed syllable if one is present. This is consistent with the findings and analyses of Grice, Ladd, & Arvaniti, 2000 (Phonology 17, 143—185), suggesting that the low turning points are the phonetic reflex of a “phrase accent. ” In the second part of this study, we measured the low turning points in falling-rising questions produced in a task-oriented dialog setting and found that their alignment is affected in the same way as in the read speech data. This suggests that read speech experiments are a valid means of investigating the phonetic details of intonation contours.
Evaluation of Spain's Water-Energy Nexus

This paper explores the water-energy nexus of Spain and offers calculations for both the energy used in the water sector and the water required to run the energy sector. The article takes a prospective approach, offering evaluations of policy objectives for biofuels and expected renewable energy sources. Approximately 5.8% of total electricity demand in Spain is due to the water sector. Irrigated agriculture is one of the Spanish water sectors that show the largest growth in energy requirements. Searches for more efficient modes of farm water use, urban waste water treatment, and the use of desalinated water must henceforth include the energy component. Furthermore, biofuel production, to the levels targeted for 2020, would have an unbearable impact on the already stressed water resources in Spain. However, growing usage of renewable energy sources is not threatened by water scarcity, but legislative measures in water allocation and water markets will be required to meet the requirements of using these sources. Some of these measures, which are pushed by regional governments, are discussed in concluding sections.
Investigation of a Novel Class of Compact Oscillator Models for Speech

The classical nonlinear oscillator (NO) model has been reported to result in more natural-sounding speech than traditional linear methods. In this paper, we investigate the application of a novel class of oscillator models called Interval Domain (ID) models to speech. Unlike the classical NO model, ID models have compact representations that can describe a wide range of linear and nonlinear signals with only a limited number of parameters. We show that low-order ID models suciently describe certain nonlinear behaviors, such as quadratic phase coupling. The relationship between model parameters and fundamental frequency is also explored. Pitch estimates can be obtained from ID models at very low signal-to-noise ratios, suggesting that this relationship is fairly robust. Finally, we demonstrate that these models are capable of preserving the fundamental frequency and waveform morphology of speech. The spectral envelope, however, is not always retained. All experiments are conducted using sentences from the TIMIT database.
Exploring the Granularity of Sparsity in Convolutional Neural Networks

Sparsity helps reducing the computation complexity of DNNs by skipping the multiplication with zeros. The granularity of sparsity affects the efficiency of hardware architecture and the prediction accuracy. In this paper we quantitatively measure the accuracy-sparsity relationship with different granularity. Coarse-grained sparsity brings more regular sparsity pattern, making it easier for hardware acceleration, and our experimental results show that coarsegrained sparsity have very small impact on the sparsity ratio given no loss of accuracy. Moreover, due to the index saving effect, coarse-grained sparsity is able to obtain similar or even better compression rates than fine-grained sparsity at the same accuracy threshold. Our analysis, which is based on the framework of a recent sparse convolutional neural network (SCNN) accelerator, further demonstrates that it saves 30% – 35% of memory references compared with fine-grained sparsity.
Binge‐eating Disorder in Obese Adolescent Girls a

Thirty percent of 51 obese adolescent girls seeking treatment for their obesity engaged in binge eating. Two psychometric measures, "disinhibition" and "happiness and satisfaction" predicted 63% of the variance in severity of binge eating. There was no difference in the history of dieting between obese subjects who binged and those who did not.
Soaring Dragons, Roaring Tigers, Growling Bears: Determinants of Regional Growth and Convergence in China, India and Russia

We perform a comparative analysis of regional growth and convergence in China, Russia and India over the period 1993–2003 by means of non-parametric methods and kernel density estimates. Our results indicate that wealthy regions were largely responsible for the rapid growth in all three countries. For China and India, capital dissipation was identified as the major determinant of regional growth. In Russia, capital deepening impeded positive changes in labour productivity, leaving technological change as the only source of regional growth. Furthermore, we find that the increasing regional income inequality in all three countries was driven by technological change which more than offset the convergence resulting from capital deepening in China and India.
Impact of Imagery Rehearsal Treatment on Distressing Dreams, Psychological Distress, and Sleep Parameters in Nightmare Patients

We investigated the impact of imagery rehearsal treatment (IRT) on nightmare frequency, psychological distress, and sleep quality using polysomnography (PSG). 12 chronic nightmare patients completed prospective dream logs, measures of psychological distress, and underwent PSG prior to and 8.5 weeks following a single IRT session. Post-treatment, significant reductions were observed in retrospective nightmare frequency (d = 1.06, p = .007), prospective bad dream frequency (d = 0.53, p = .03), and anxiety scores (d = 1.01, p = .004). Minimal sleep alterations were found post-IRT, and varied as a function of nightmare etiology. The results independently replicate the efficacy of IRT for alleviating disturbing dreams and psychological distress. Sleep improvement may occur later in the recovery process.
Rhetoric and Reality: Science Teacher Educators' Views and Practice Regarding Science Process Skills

The importance of teaching science process skills in science education is well documented in the literature. Yet the issue of process skills had also been associated with debates on validity of a process approach to science education. This research was conducted to explore views of science teacher educators in initial teacher education programmes with regard to the importance of science process skills and how their beliefs of teaching influence their teaching of these skills. The study is located within an interpretive paradigm as an in-depth study of the views of six teacher educators was undertaken. Written responses to questions and interviews produced the necessary data. While the findings reveal that teacher educators have differing opinions regarding what constitutes process skills and differ with regard to the importance of such skills, they do identify a number of core skills as being most important, including some generic skills. The findings further show that, while science process skills are regarded as important, lecturers hold pedagogical beliefs that privilege the development of conceptual understanding rather than the acquisition of science process skills within their teaching practice. Their rhetoric regarding the importance of process skills does not therefore always match their self-reported practice, lending support to the continuing debate around science process skills.
Systemic Vasculitis in the 1980s—Is There an Increasing Incidence of Wegener's Graanulomatosis and Microscopic Polyarteritis?

Thirty-six cases of Wegener's granulomatosis (WG) and microscopic polyarteritis (MPA) presenting to the nephrology service in Leicester between 1980 and 1989 were reviewed. Apart from the diagnostic respiratory tract lesions seen in WG, cases of MPA and WG could not be distinguished by age and sex, range and severity of organ involvement, response to treatment (oral prednisolone and cyclophosphamide), mortality or renal outcome. The combined incidence of WG and MPA in 1980—86 was 1.5/million/year. Following the introduction in January 1987 of an assay for anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA), the incidence of WG and MPA increased in 1987—89 to 6.1/million/year (p<0.0001). Cases seen during these two periods did not differ by any clinical parameter except that later cases had less severe renal disease at referral and improved renal outcome. Median serum creatinine was significantly lower at presentation in 1987—89 (p<0.02). Of those surviving 3 months from presentation only 1/20 in 1987—89 had end stage renal failure compared with 4/10 in 1980—86 (p<0.02). These findings may reflect increasing diagnostic awareness of WG and MPA among physicians since the introduction of ANCA.
Modelling the nexus between defense spending and economic growth in asean- 5: Evidence from co-integrated panel analysis

The paper explores the nexus between defense spending and economic growth in the five ASEAN countries namely, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand over the period 1988 - 2007. The empirical analysis is based on co-integration and causality test at the individual level and panel level. The findings suggest the presence of unidirectional causality from economic growth to defense spending in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. It also finds the feedback between defense spending and economic growth in Philippines at the individual level and at the panel of ASEAN- 5. The implication of this research is that neither economic growth nor defense spending can be considered as exogenously determined. Key words: Economic growth, defense spending, panel co-integration.
Moral Hazard in Reinsurance Markets

This paper attempts to identify moral hazard in the traditional reinsurance market. We build a multi-period principle agent model of the reinsurance transaction from which we derive predictions on premium design, monitoring, loss control and insurer risk retention. We then use panel data on U.S. property liability reinsurance to test the model. The empirical results are consistent with the model's predictions. In particular, we find evidence for the use of loss sensitive premiums when the insurer and reinsurer are not affiliates (i.e., not part of the same financial group), but little or no use of monitoring. In contrast, we find evidence for the use of monitoring when the insurer and reinsurer are affiliates, where monitoring costs are lower, but little use of price controls.
A Political Model of the Business Cycle

Under the hypothesis of a myopic electorate, vote-loss-minimizing behavior by the party in power subject to a dynamic inflation-unemployment relation is shown to generate a stable electoral policy cycle. The pattern of unemployment and inflation in the United States during the four presidential election periods from 1957 through 1972 is then examined for evidence of whether or not the administration believes the electorate is myopic. The conclusion is that the myopic hypothesis does a superior job of explaining aggregate demand policy, as reflected by the unemployment rate, during the second and third election periods, while the hypothesis that the administration believes the electorate is rational does a better job in the first and fourth periods.
Crop Productivity and the Global Livestock Sector: Implications for Land Use Change and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The livestock sector accounts for 30% of global land area and is a major driver of land use change. The price reductions generated by crop yield increases should, ceteris paribus, encourage farmers to replace some of the grass in ruminant rations with crops. This would lead to land sparing and related carbon dioxide emission reductions in regions where the feed productivity per unit of area is higher for cropland than for grassland. Six land cover types are distinguished in GLOBIOM: cropland, grassland, short rotation tree plantations, managed forest, unmanaged forest and other natural vegetation. Depending on the relative profitability of the individual activities, and on the inertia constraints, the model can switch from one land cover type to another. Comprehensive greenhouse gas accounting for agriculture and land use change is implemented in the model. Crop yield development will play a critical role in future land use dynamics. Indeed, it will determine the requirements for additional cropland, and also have a strong impact on grassland expansion.
Phase II study of SU5416—a small‐molecule, vascular endothelial growth factor tyrosine‐kinase receptor inhibitor—in patients with refractory myeloproliferative diseases

Increased bone marrow angiogenesis and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels are of adverse prognostic significance in patients with myeloproliferative disorders (MPD), including agnogenic myeloid metaplasia (AMM), chronic myeloid leukemia in blastic phase (CML‐BP), and chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML). VEGF is a soluble, circulating, angiogenic molecule that acts through receptor tyrosine kinases (RTK), including VEGF receptor 2 (VEGFR‐2). SU5416 is a small‐molecule RTK inhibitor (RTKI) that targets VEGFR‐2, c‐kit, and fms‐related tyrosine kinase Flk2.
Disease-Specific Moral Hazard and Optimal Health Insurance Design for Physician Services

This article analyzes disease-specific moral hazard effects in the demand for physician office visits and explores whether optimal insurance for physician services should be designed to have disease-specific cost sharing. Generalized method of moments is implemented to address the endogeneity of private health insurance, and the nonnegativity and the discreteness of physician services use. The results indicate that the moral hazard effect varies considerably across disease-specific specialist care. The strongest moral hazard (for no-condition related specialist visits) is almost twice the moral hazard effect of the weakest (for chronic condition related specialist visits). Although the findings indicate some variation in the moral hazard effect across disease-specific general practitioner visits, the variation is less considerable. The main policy implication is that optimal insurance for physician services should be designed to have differential cost sharing based on disease status rather than to have uniform cost sharing.