Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spinal Stenosis Vs Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury: A Rehabilitation Outcome Comparison

Abstract Objective: Nontraumatic spinal cord injury (NT/SCI), which can occur secondary to spinal stenosis, has been shown to represent a significant proportion of individuals admitted for SCI rehabilitation. The objective of this study was to compare demographics and outcomes of patients with spinal stenosis-induced SCI (SS/SCI) with those with traumatic spinal cord injury (T/SCI) following inpatient rehabilitation. Design: This 7-year prospective review compared 81patients with SS/SCI and 102 patients with T/SCI admitted to an SCI rehabilitation unit with similar levels and completeness of injury. Main outcome measures included rehabilitation hospital length of stay (LOS), Functional Independence Measure (FIM) scores, FIM change, FIM efficiency, rehabilitation charges, and discharge rates to home. Results: Results indicate that, when compared with the T/SCI, patients with SS/SCI had a significantly (P < .05) higher mean age (64.1 years vs 44.4 years), were more often female (39% vs 20%), and tended to present with paraplegia vs tetraplegia (69% vs 46%) and with motor incomplete SCI vs incomplete SCI (100% vs 49%). When comparing etiologies of SCI within tetraplegic and paraplegic groups, results showed that individuals with tetraplegic SS/SCI had a significantly (P < .05) shorter rehabilitation LOS (25.7 vs 35.9 days), and lower FIM change (24.5 vs 32.5) and FIM efficiency (1.0 vs 1.3); however, no statistical differences were noted for discharge FIM scores and discharge to home rates. Individuals with paraplegic SS/SCI also had significantly lower FIM change (20.2 vs 28.7); however no significant differences were noted for rehabilitation LOS, charges, FIM efficiency, or discharge-to-home rates. Conclusions: The findings indicate that patients with SS/SCI present with less severe clinical impairments (motor incomplete and paraplegia) in comparison with patients with T/SCI. Clinically similar SS/SCI groups were noted to achieve rates of functional gain and community discharge comparable with T/SCI patients. Although patients with T/SCI achieved greater overall functional improvement, patients with SS/SCI had shorter rehabilitation LOS and lower rehabilitation charges. These findings have important implications for the interdisciplinary rehabilitation process in the overall management and outcome of individuals with NT/SCI.
An accurate measure of callable bond price sensitivity to interest rates and passage of time

Abstract This paper explores a general mathematical expression for approximating the callable bond return in terms of passage of time and yield change. The callable bond can be decomposed into the contributions from the effect of call-adjusted and the effect of passage of time. The study examines each component of the approximation of the callable bond return that is sensitive to changes in the passage of time and changes in market yield. Finally, based on a numerical example, comparisons are made with other approximation approaches based on effective duration and convexity. The results indicate that the proposed approximation measurement is closer to the theoretical measurement than the effective approximation when the market yield is greater than the coupon rate.
Bottlenecks, Drought, and Oil Price Spikes: Impact on U.S. Ethanol and Agricultural Sectors

We project U.S. ethanol production and its impact on planted acreage, crop prices, livestock production, trade, and retail food costs. The projections are made using a multicommodity, multicountry, partial equilibrium model. Results indicate that expanded U.S. ethanol production will cause long-run crop prices to increase. In response to higher feed costs, livestock farmgate prices increase enough to cover the feed cost increases. If crude oil prices increase, the U.S. ethanol sector expands. Results of a 1988-type drought scenario combined with a large mandate for ethanol consumption show higher crop prices, a drop in livestock production, and higher food prices.
The cost of capital, corporation finance and the theory of investment: a refinement

The proof of Proposition I in the work of Modigliani and Miller (MM) (1958) is based on the mechanism of arbitrage. Two cases are considered: first, the case where the value of the levered firm is larger than that of the unlevered one; second, the case where the value of the levered firm is smaller than that of the unlevered one. The first case involves the investor engaging in personal borrowing. This article shows that the amount borrowed is greater than the amount envisaged by MM, and that the proof of Proposition I is slightly altered.
Clustering of dispersed ribosomal DNA and its role in gene regulation and chromosome-end associations in malaria parasites

Dynamic changes in gene positioning contribute to differential expression of virulence-related gene families in protozoan pathogens; however, the role of nuclear architecture in gene expression in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum remains poorly understood. Here we investigated the developmentally regulated ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene family in P. falciparum, which, unlike that in most eukaryotes, contains only a few unlinked copies of rRNA genes scattered over the subtelomeric regions of several chromosomes. We show that active and silent members of this gene family cluster in a single perinuclear nucleolus. This rDNA nuclear confinement is DNA sequence dependent, as plasmids carrying rDNA fragments are targeted to the nucleolus. Likewise, insertion of an rDNA sequence into a subtelomere from a chromosome lacking rRNA genes leads to repositioning in the nucleolus. Furthermore, we observed that rDNA spatial organization restricted interchromosomal interactions, as chromosome end-bearing rRNA genes were found to be preferentially juxtaposed, demonstrating nonrandom association of telomeres. Using Br-UTP incorporation, we observed two α-amanitin–resistant nucleolar transcription sites that disappeared when the rDNA cluster broke up in the replicative blood stages. Taken together, our results provide conceptual insights into functionally differentiated nuclear territories and their role in gene expression in malaria parasites.
The Frequency-sensitivity of Normal Ears.

Minimum Audible Pressure Variation for Tones of 60 to 4,000 Cycles. ---The rather discordant results obtained by other investigators are briefly reviewed and are summarized in Fig. 1. In the present research an attempt was made to get results with a definite dynamical significance. A special air-damped telephone receiver held tightly to the ear, was excited by an alternating current of variable frequency from a vacuum tube oscillator provided with special low pass filters to eliminate upper harmonics, and the current strength was changed logarithmically by means of a special attenuator until the threshold was reached. The observations were made in a special sound proof room whose construction is described. The probable error is about 25 per cent. To reduce the results to absolute units, the system was calibrated in two ways, both involving the substitution of a condenser transmitter for the ear, the source of sound being a telephone receiver in one case and in the other a small thermal receiver inserted in the ear meatus or in a similar cavity in front of the condenser transmitter. Mechanical analogues of the vibrating systems involved in these measurements are described in an Appendix to help make the dynamics clear. While the unknown mechanical constants of the inner ear introduce some uncertainty, the agreement of the two calibrations indicates that the error is not large. Frequency-sensitivity curves were obtained for approximately 100 normal and 20 abnormal ears. So-called normal ears were found to vary widely in relative frequency sensitivity and in absolute sensitivity, and some audiograms show interesting individual peculiarities. But on the average, the minimum audible pressure variation increases regularly from about 0.15 dyne/${\mathrm{cm}. }^{2}$ at 60 cycles to 0.001 dyne/${\mathrm{cm}. }^{2}$ at 1,000 cycles and is then approximately constant up to at least 4,000 cycles.
An Experiment in Voluntary Environmental Regulation: Participation in EPA's 33/50 Program

Abstract The U.S. EPA has initiated the 33/50 program to encourage firms to voluntarily reduce releases and transfers of 17 toxic chemicals. This paper evaluates the factors leading to participation in this program to assess its potential to augment more traditional command and control regulation. The results show that large firms with substantial toxic releases in unconcentrated industries are the most likely participants. The results also indicate that public information and awareness plays an important role and that EPA and other regulators can improve environmental performance by encouraging competition in environmental quality.
Who is Caring for the Underserved? A Comparison of Primary Care Physicians and Nonphysician Clinicians in California and Washington

PURPOSE: Little is known about whether different types of physician and nonphysician primary care clinicians vary in their propensity to care for underserved populations. The objective of this study was to compare the geographic distribution and patient populations of physician and nonphysician primary care clinicians. METHODS: This study was a cross-sectional analysis of 1998 administrative and survey data on primary care clinicians (family physicians, general internists, general pediatricians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and certified nurse-midwives) in California and Washington. For geographic analysis, main outcome measures were practice in a rural area, a vulnerable population area (communities with high proportions of minorities or low-income residents), or a health professions shortage area (HPSA). For patient population analysis, outcomes were the proportions of Medicaid, uninsured, and minority patients in the practice. RESULTS: Physician assistants ranked first or second in each state in the proportion of their members practicing in rural areas and HPSAs, and in California physician assistants also had the greatest proportion of their members working in vulnerable populations areas (P < .001). Compared with primary care physicians overall, nurse practitioners and certified nurse-midwives also tended to have a greater proportion of their members in rural areas and HPSAs (P < .001). Family physicians were much more likely than other primary care physicians to work in rural areas and HPSAs (P < .001). Compared with physicians, nonphysician clinicians in California had a substantially greater proportion of Medicaid, uninsured, and minority patients (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Nonphysician primary care clinicians and family physicians have a greater propensity to care for underserved populations than do primary care physicians in other specialties. Achieving a more equitable pattern of service to needy populations will require ongoing, active commitment by policy makers, educational institutions, and the professions to a mission of public service and to incentives that support and promote care to the underserved.
Reconciling “Bottom-Up” Perspectives with “Top-Down” Change Data in Evaluating Area Regeneration Schemes

During the 2000s, policy development in the UK was increasingly underpinned by evidence-based research. This was seen as providing policy-makers with a more robust scientific base upon which to make decisions, although in practice other impulses, such as the need to legitimize decisions, proved as important as the evidence base in defining policy. Evaluations of area-based initiatives (ABIs) are complex because of a range of both generic and operational constraints. England's New Deal for Communities (NDC) Programme was subject to a long-term evaluation based on a mixed methods research design involving both “top-down” quantitative data and “bottom-up” qualitative case-study findings examining how regeneration played out at the local level. There were marked inconsistencies between the two sets of evidence, due largely to local observers being overly optimistic about change associated with the Programme's three key design principles: establishing NDC Partnerships; working with agencies; and placing the community at the heart of the initiative. Findings have implications for evaluating, and justifying, ABIs.
Kinds of Blue: Diversity in UN Peacekeeping Missions and Civilian Protection

For a given number of troops in a peace operation, is it advisable to have soldiers from a single country, or should the UN recruit peacekeepers from a variety of donor countries? Since 1990, the number of contributors to peace operations has grown threefold, and most operations have carried the mandate to protect civilians. This article explores the effect of diversity in the composition of a mission, measured by fractionalization and polarization indices, on its performance in protecting civilians in Africa in the period 1991–2008. It finds that mission diversity decreases the level of violence against civilians, a result that holds when geographic and linguistic distances between countries are considered.
Trade Unions and Political Participation in the European Union: Still Providing a Democratic Dividend?

Decline in electoral participation is a feature of many Western democracies. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between trade union membership and political participation. Workplace authority structures, trade union membership and union presence have been identified as important influences on electoral participation. Based on a survey of employees in 15 member states of the European Union, we test for a relationship between political participation, union membership and union workplace presence. The independent effect of trade union membership on political participation was found to be both significant and positive and is associated with higher levels of political activism and electoral participation. Furthermore, an institutional context that facilitates high levels of union density seems likely to have an overall positive effect on citizen participation.
The Value of Public Goods Generated by a Major League Sports Team

This article reports an application of the contingent valuation method to measure the value of public goods generated by a professional sports team, the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League. The data and analysis indicate that a major league sports team can produce widely consumed public goods such as civic pride and community spirit and that the value of those public goods may be substantial. However, in the case of the Penguins, the value of the public goods is far less than the cost of building a new arena. Although the analysis of public goods generated by other teams in other cities might lead to different results, the results of this article call into question the widespread practice of government funding of sports stadiums and arenas because it appears that the costs borne by taxpayers exceed the benefits received.
Intellectual capital performance of quoted banks on the Istanbul stock exchange market

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to obtain measure of the intellectual capital (IC) performance of quoted banks on the Istanbul Stock Exchange Market (ISE) in Turkey for the period 1995‐2004 and test the effect of the intellectual capital performance on profitability.Design/methodology/approach – Data required for calculating intellectual capital efficiencies were obtained from the ISE for the period 1995‐2004. The authors measured the intellectual capital performance of quoted banks in ISE using the efficiency coefficient, called Value Added Intellectual Coefficiency (VAICTM), and tested the effect of this intellectual capital performance on profitability using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). In addition, three different portfolios were constructed based on three different inputs to observe the effect of the intellectual capital on investors' behavior.Findings – The effect of intellectual capital on profitability on the banking sector on the ISE was calculated as 61.3 percent on average and Portfol.
The Microbiome of Animals: Implications for Conservation Biology

In recent years the human microbiome has become a growing area of research and it is becoming clear that the microbiome of humans plays an important role for human health. Extensive research is now going into cataloging and annotating the functional role of the human microbiome. The ability to explore and describe the microbiome of any species has become possible due to new methods for sequencing. These techniques allow comprehensive surveys of the composition of the microbiome of nonmodel organisms of which relatively little is known. Some attention has been paid to the microbiome of insect species including important vectors of pathogens of human and veterinary importance, agricultural pests, and model species. Together these studies suggest that the microbiome of insects is highly dependent on the environment, species, and populations and affects the fitness of species. These fitness effects can have important implications for the conservation and management of species and populations. Further, these results are important for our understanding of invasion of nonnative species, responses to pathogens, and responses to chemicals and global climate change in the present and future.
THE FUTURE OF THE WORLD SUGAR MARKET--A SPATIAL PRICE EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS

A spatial price equilibrium (SPE) model of the world sugar market is programmed. The model covers more than hundred regions and contains sugar in as a sole product. It has a detailed coverage of policies and bilateral trade agreements. It is programmed as a mixed complementarity problem (MCP) in GAMS and uses the PATH solver. The SPE framework offers considerable advantages over other model approaches applied to the sugar market before. Four scenarios are simulated: A baseline scenario until 2015/16, accounting for implementation of the EU reform and market access commitments already decided upon. The liberalization scenarios include an implementation of the Falconer proposal for the current round of WTO negotiations, a full liberalization by the EU and a liberalization of all sugar policies world-wide. In the latter the world market price increases by around 30%. Results are discussed and related to special properties of the SPE approach. Strengths and weaknesses are identified and an outlook on the further refinement of the analysis is given.
Empirical Bayes method in the study of traffic safety via heterogeneous negative multinomial model

In the study of traffic safety, expected crash frequencies across sites are generally estimated via the negative binomial model, assuming time invariant safety. Since the time invariant safety assumption may be invalid, Hauer (1997) proposed a modified empirical Bayes (EB) method. Despite the modification, no attempts have been made to examine the generalisable form of the marginal distribution resulting from the modified EB framework. Because the hyper-parameters needed to apply the modified EB method are not readily available, an assessment is lacking on how accurately the modified EB method estimates safety in the presence of the time variant safety and regression-to-the-mean (RTM) effects. This study derives the closed form marginal distribution, and reveals that the marginal distribution in the modified EB method is equivalent to the negative multinomial (NM) distribution, which is essentially the same as the likelihood function used in the random effects Poisson model. As a result, this study shows that the gamma posterior distribution from the multivariate Poisson–gamma mixture can be estimated using the NM model or the random effects Poisson model. This study also shows that the estimation errors from the modified EB method are systematically smaller than those from the comparison group method by simultaneously accounting for the RTM and time variant safety effects. Hence, the modified EB method via the NM model is a generalisable method for estimating safety in the presence of the time variant safety and the RTM effects.
An Improved Calculation Method for Activity Energy Expenditure by using PNS

In daily life, walking is one of the most energy consumed activity. There are many researches’ focuses on energy expenditure estimation using GPS and 3-axis accelerometer for location tracking and activity monitoring. However, in the case of walking on a slope, GPS location tracking method and 3-axis accelerometer method are failed to estimate the energy consumption while walking on a slope. In this study, we combine the information of GPS in smart phone, the information of foot-mounted IMU and also the slope information from Google elevation database to estimate activity energy expenditure. Energy expenditure in static movement is calculated using accelerometer data. Therefore, the energy expenditure calculator is capable to calculate energy expenditure in static movement and also in dynamic movement. Experiment result shows that the increase in elevation in slope, there is an increase in activity energy expenditure. We also show there is higher energy expenditure when jumping.
Safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of 48 weeks of etravirine therapy in a phase IIb dose-ranging study involving treatment-experienced patients with HIV-1 infection.

BACKGROUND Etravirine (ETR; also known as TMC125) is a new nonnucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitor with activity against wild-type and nonnucleoside reverse-transcriptase inhibitor-resistant human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). METHODS This randomized, phase IIb, placebo-controlled, 2-stage, dose-escalating trial evaluated the safety, tolerability, and preliminary efficacy of 3 twice-daily doses of ETR (experimental formulation TF035; compared with placebo), administered with an individually optimized background regimen, in treatment-experienced HIV-1-infected patients. In stage 1 of the trial, 166 patients received ETR (400 mg or 800 mg twice daily) or placebo. In stage 2 of the trial, 74 patients received ETR (800 mg or 1200 mg twice daily) or placebo. The primary objective was to assess the safety and tolerability of the regimens over 48 weeks. RESULTS Neuropsychiatric adverse events (AEs) of interest occurred in 46.6% of patients in the combined ETR group and in 45.5% of patients in the combined placebo group (P=.89). Clinically relevant hepatic AEs occurred in 3.4% of patients who received ETR and in 6.1% of patients who received placebo (P=.47), and rash occurred in 19.5% and 12.1%, respectively (P=.25). In general, there was no evidence of a relationship between ETR dose and specific AEs. Most AEs were severity grade 1 or 2; the incidence of grade 3 or 4 AEs was comparable between groups (27.0% in the combined ETR group vs. 27.3% in the placebo group). Plasma preparation tubes were used for viral load measurement. In stage 1, there was no statistically significant difference in efficacy between ETR and placebo. In stage 2, the decrease in log10 plasma viral load between baseline and week 24 was statistically significantly greater in patients who received ETR, compared with patients who received placebo; a trend in favor of ETR persisted until week 48. CONCLUSIONS ETR was generally safe and well tolerated during long-term administration in treatment-experienced, HIV-1-infected patients, and it had a safety profile comparable to that of placebo.
Modeling Integrated Development Investments in Rural Areas: An Indonesian Illustration

Rural development continues to receive the attention of Third World governments and development agencies. Despite substantial funding, progress remains slow, partly as a result of the lack of sound planning. Too frequently, programs are duplicative, and the need for a systems approach is not recognized. This article demonstrates the utility of a goal programming method for coordinating investments in rural areas. The method recognizes the importance of a hierarchy of service centers through which public goods may be delivered. A rural setting in Indonesia is used to show how the approach can be implemented.