Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revealed Multilateral Trade Resistance in Gravity Models – A Network Approach

The position of countries in the world trade network (WTN) is fundamental in understanding and explaining trade flows between countries. Recent theoretical models introduce these network structures into the traditional gravity model, most notably Anderson and van Wincoop (2003) by introducing the concept of multilateral trade resistance (MTR). Despite these theoretical insights, little has been done to empirically validate these network effects. The concept of MTR remains a black box with many unobservable factors. The key contributions of this paper are the following. First, we capture the network effect of the WTN by the notion of revealed multilateral trade resistance (RMTR), which consists of calculating first-order and second-order network effects of the WTN. Secondly, we show that this network structure is important to explain bilateral trade patterns, by presenting an augmented gravity model, which includes the RMTR. In particular, we characterize the RMTR by two network indicators, degrees and clustering, and show that these indicators have strong and significant, but opposing effects on bilateral trade values. A higher degree raises average bilateral trade values, while a higher clustering coefficient has a negative impact on bilateral trade. Finally, we decompose the effect of the RMTR by studying its effect on the intensive and extensive margins of trade. We find that the effect of degrees is positive and fairly symmetric on both the intensive and the extensive margin of trade. The effect of clustering is, however, positive on the intensive margin, but negative on the extensive margin, indicating competition effects. Hence it appears that countries decrease their variety in exported goods due to competition in the global network. However, they trade their varieties more intensely. (JEL D85, F14)
Is what you see what you get? Visual vs. measured assessments of vegetation condition

An important step in the conservation of biodiversity is to identify what exists, its quantity and its quality (i.e. condition). This can be a daunting task at the landscape-scale, so vegetation communities are often used as surrogates for biodiversity. Satellite imagery has improved our ability to rapidly measure vegetation parameters but the need for calibration still requires rapid and cost-effective on-ground condition assessment. Some management agencies address this need by using visual condition assessments, with unknown consequences for the different purposes of condition data. It is therefore vital to examine the comparability of visual and systematic condition assessment methods to guide their use in conservation decision making. We compared visual assessments of vegetation condition with more systematic and higher resolution on-ground assessments, using a method where both assessments were made for the same quadrats. We determined both the condition parameters observers respond to when making visual assessments of condition, and the consequences of any differences for the application of these data. We found that visual assessment of vegetation condition broadly represented measured assessments of the same vegetation, but that observers simplify their assessments by responding to only some of the measured condition parameters. No consistent trends were found in the parameters observers responded to across the different vegetation types sampled. Synthesis and applications. We conclude that visual estimates of vegetation condition are only of sufficient resolution to replace more expensive, high-resolution assessments at a landscape-scale, when condition results are combined over multiple areas and vegetation types. Visual assessment methods potentially can provide an efficient measure of overall condition for conservation management agencies where practitioners can make assessments of condition in the course of their daily management activities - an important step forward. At smaller scales, idiosyncratic effects render visual estimates highly variable when compared with systematic condition assessments. This variability, especially among vegetation types, suggests that more systematic assessments are necessary when management decisions require higher-resolution estimates of changes in individual condition parameters, such as when measuring the success of individual management actions. These findings provide a valuable guide for selecting the most appropriate approach for the different objectives of condition assessments for biodiversity conservation. © 2010 The Authors. Journal compilation
Dwelling unit choice in a condominium complex: Analysis of willingness to pay and preference heterogeneity

We study the choice of dwelling units in a condominium complex, a problem that has not been thoroughly investigated in the housing research literature. We take a revealed preference approach to quantify home buyers’ preference toward attributes associated with a dwelling unit. In particular, we estimate a mixed logit model using the hierarchical Bayes approach based on the Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. We derive the willingness to pay measures for detailed attributes associated with a dwelling unit including its floor level, orientation, location in the complex, location on a floor level, and the type of bathrooms. We also find strong evidence for the preference heterogeneity among home buyers and conduct regression analysis to explain the preference heterogeneity using home buyers’ socioeconomic characteristics. Our results show that home buyers with older ages and higher annual household income tend to focus more on the quality of the dwelling units, while first-time home buyers are more willing to accept dwelling units with less-desirable attributes.
Outcomes and Predictors of Early Infection after Heart Transplantation.

BACKGROUND Limited data exist on the incidence and outcome of early infection after orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT). The purpose of this study was to describe characteristics and outcomes of OHT recipients with an early infection and to identify predictors of such infections. METHODS This retrospective, single-center study included patients greater than 18 years of age who underwent OHT from February 2009 to May 2014 and had an infection within 30 days of transplantation. Patient demographics, clinical variables, and outcomes were collected. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify independent predictors of infection. RESULTS Of the 172 eligible OHT recipients, 51 (29.7%) had an early infection. The median time to diagnosis was five days, with gram-negative organisms being slightly more common (58.2%). No differences in mortality rate, rejection, or re-admission were found between the groups. Longer durations of mechanical ventilation and lengths of stay were found in the infection group (p < 0.001). Patients with an early infection also had a higher incidence of mechanical circulatory support, history of drive-line infection, longer duration of mechanical ventilation, continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT), and delayed chest closure (p < 0.05 for all). Pre-OHT left-ventricular assist device (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 2.53; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.015-6.286; p < 0.046), pre-OHT extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (AOR 14.10; 95% CI 1.38-150.5; p = 0.026) and post-OHT CRRT (AOR 3.98; 95% CI 1.67-9.52; p = 0.002) were found to be independent risk factors for an early infection. A total of 90% of the available susceptibility panels for the gram-negative isolates (26/29) were resistant to the standard peri-operative cephalosporin given. CONCLUSIONS Prior mechanical circulatory support and the acute need for CRRT may predispose OHT patients to an infection early in the post-operative period. Evaluation of peri-operative antimicrobial prophylaxis, based on an individual center's resistance panels, may be warranted.
On bivariate lifetime modelling in life insurance applications

Insurance and annuity products covering several lives require the modelling of the joint distribution of future lifetimes. In the interest of simplifying calculations, it is common in practice to assume that the future lifetimes among a group of people are independent. However, extensive research over the past decades suggests otherwise. In this paper, a copula approach is used to model the dependence between lifetimes within a married couple \eH{using data from a large Canadian insurance company}. As a novelty, the age difference and the \eH{gender} of the elder partner are introduced as an argument of the dependence parameter. \green{Maximum likelihood techniques are} thus implemented for the parameter estimation. Not only do the results make clear that the correlation decreases with age difference, but also the dependence between the lifetimes is higher when husband is older than wife. A goodness-of-fit procedure is applied in order to assess the validity of the model. Finally, considering several products available on the life insurance market, the paper concludes with practical illustrations.
The role of game mammals as bushmeat In the Caatinga, northeast Brazil

Although the use of wild mammals as a source of food has been better studied in tropical forest environments, their importance as a source of protein for human communities in semiarid environments is little known. In the latter, the availability of wild animal meat is limited in comparison to other environments. In the semiarid regions of northeastern Brazil, hunting wild mammals for their meat is traditional, playing a crucial role in the livelihoods and food security of various rural and urban communities, especially during the annual drought seasons. In this study, we investigated the role of wild mammals as bushmeat in 10 communities within the Caatinga biome in northeast Brazil. We used key-informant interviews, household surveys, and questionnaires to determine the species hunted and consumed. We found that about 30 species were used for bushmeat, with communities clustering into two main groups. We showed that in almost all municipalities visited, all mammals hunted were reported after interview days. A total of 46.9% of hunters consumed bushmeat at least once a week. However, preference for bushmeat over livestock was perceived to be more a matter of taste (61.50% of respondents) than a real need for protein supplementation from the wild. The ease of entering environmental areas where wild mammals can be found has disadvantages for wildlife in terms of pressure and overexploitation, especially where it concerns endangered species. The key to understanding the socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological contexts in which there are traditional uses is to develop conservationist strategies suitable for the socioeconomic reality of human populations.
Forecasting core inflation: the case of South Africa

ABSTRACT Underlying, or core, inflation is likely the most important variable for monetary policy. It is considered to be the optimal nominal anchor as it is stable, excludes relative price shocks, and reflects underlying trends in the behaviour of price-setters and demand conditions in the economy. Despite its importance, there is sparse literature on estimating and forecasting core inflation in South Africa, with the focus still on measuring it. This paper emphasizes predicting core inflation from time-varying parameter vector autoregressive models (TVP-VARs), factor-augmented VARs (FAVAR), and structural break models using quarterly data from 1981Q1 to 2013Q4. We use mean squared forecast errors (MSFE) and predictive likelihoods to evaluate the forecasts. In general, we find that (i) time-varying parameter models consistently outperform constant coefficient models (ii) small TVP-VARs outperform all other models; (iii) models with heteroscedastic errors do better than models with homoscedastic errors; and (iv) allowing for structural breaks does not improve the predictability of core inflation. Overall, our results imply that additional information on the growth rate of the economy and the interest rate is sufficient to forecast core inflation accurately, but the relationship between these three variables needs to be modelled in a time-varying fashion.
Development of 64Cu-NOTA-Trastuzumab for HER2 Targeting: A Radiopharmaceutical with Improved Pharmacokinetics for Human Studies

The purpose of this study was to develop 64Cu-labeled trastuzumab with improved pharmacokinetics for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). Methods: Trastuzumab was conjugated with SCN-Bn-NOTA and radiolabeled with 64Cu. Serum stability and immunoreactivity of 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab were tested. Small-animal PET imaging and biodistribution studies were performed in a HER2-positive breast cancer xenograft model (BT-474). The internal dosimetry for experimental animals was determined using the image-based approach with the Monte Carlo N-particle code. Results: 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab was prepared with high radiolabeling yield and radiochemical purity (>98%) and showed high stability in serum and good immunoreactivity. Uptake of 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab was highest at 48 h after injection as determined by PET imaging and biodistribution results in BT-474 tumors. The blood radioactivity concentrations of 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab decreased biexponentially with time in both mice with and mice without BT-474 tumor xenografts. The calculated absorbed dose of 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab was 0.048 mGy/MBq for the heart, 0.079 mGy/MBq for the liver, and 0.047 mGy/MBq for the spleen. Conclusion: 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab was effectively targeted to the HER2-expressing tumor in vitro and in vivo, and it exhibited a relatively low absorbed dose due to a short residence time. Therefore, 64Cu-NOTA-trastuzumab could be applied to select the right patients and right timing for HER2 therapy, to monitor the treatment response after HER2-targeted therapy, and to detect distal or metastatic spread.
Small Business Use of the Internet

Abstract This manuscript reports the results of a survey of small businesses' use of the Internet. The telephone survey of a random sample of 120 small businesses sought to determine the proportion of businesses with Internet access, how the Internet was being used by their organization, and organizational characteristics. Almost eighty percent of the respondents surveyed reported using a computer in their business. Of that group, about 69 percent reported they had Internet access and almost half had a Web page. When asked about how the Internet was being used in their business, the most common answer was to obtain general information, followed by ordering products and supplies, obtaining supplier information, obtaining customer information, obtaining competitor information, and for entertainment purposes. Respondents who had Internet access were also asked whether they had a Web page. Almost one-half indicated that they had a Web page. Of those who did not have a Web page, about one-half planned on having one within a year. Companies reported that most common uses of their Web sites were to display company or product information and engage in advertising of their products. Some businesses were also using their Web site to sell products. Most companies with a Web site had experienced an increase in sales.
A Novel Algorithm Based on the Change in Entropy Value for Load Balancing in Cluster System

: The fast development in the internet era through the distributed network has changed the scope of the developers by improving task allocation and migration strategies. The problems in these systems are of ill-balanced task allocation strategies, long response time, low throughput rate and poor performance. The proposed load balancing algorithm focuses on a calculated entropy value of a load. To improve the performance of a system the load scheduling and migration policy are applied by considering the calculated entropy value. The load scheduling and migration is based on the factors like, speed of the system, server and client configuration, time of server-client communication, performance benchmark, etc. The proposed system focuses on a novel approach of calculating the entropy value of the load for the load balancing and migration. The traditional algorithm has the issues of low throughput, poor performance and long response time. The proposed algorithm achieves the load balancing and migration whenever required by calculating entropy and increases the system performance and throughput.
Pivot Based Language Modeling for Improved Neural Domain Adaptation

Representation learning with pivot-based methods and with Neural Networks (NNs) have lead to significant progress in domain adaptation for Natural Language Processing. However, most previous work that follows these approaches does not explicitly exploit the structure of the input text, and its output is most often a single representation vector for the entire text. In this paper we present the Pivot Based Language Model (PBLM), a representation learning model that marries together pivot-based and NN modeling in a structure aware manner. Particularly, our model processes the information in the text with a sequential NN (LSTM) and its output consists of a representation vector for every input word. Unlike most previous representation learning models in domain adaptation, PBLM can naturally feed structure aware text classifiers such as LSTM and CNN. We experiment with the task of cross-domain sentiment classification on 20 domain pairs and show substantial improvements over strong baselines.
Length-dependent regulation of left ventricular function in coronary surgery patients.

BACKGROUND Load-dependent impairment of left ventricular (LV) function was observed after leg elevation in a subgroup of coronary surgery patients. The present study investigated underlying mechanisms by comparing hemodynamic effects of an increase in LV systolic pressures with leg elevation to effects of a similar increase in systolic pressures with phenylephrine. METHODS The study was performed in patients undergoing elective coronary surgery prior to cardiopulmonary bypass. High-fidelity LV pressure tracings (n = 25) and conductance LV volume data (n = 10) were obtained consecutively during leg elevation and after phenylephrine administration (5 microg/kg). RESULTS Leg elevation resulted in a homogeneous increase in end-diastolic volume. The change in stroke volume (SV), stroke work (SW) and dP/dtmax was variable, with an increase in some patients but no change or a decrease in other patients. For a matched increase in systolic pressures, phenylephrine increased SW and dP/dtmax in all patients with no change in SV. Load dependence of relaxation (slope R of the tau-end-systolic pressure relation) was inversely related for changes in SV, SW, and dP/dtmax with leg elevation but not with phenylephrine. CONCLUSIONS The different effects of leg elevation and phenylephrine suggest that the observed decrease in SV, SW, and dP/dtmax with leg elevation in some patients could not be attributed to an impaired contractile response to increased systolic LV pressures. Instead, load-dependent impairment of LV function after leg elevation appeared related to a deficient length-dependent regulation of myocardial function.
The expanding spectrum of pediatric anti-glutamic acid decarboxylase antibody mediated CNS disease - a chance association?

Central nervous system autoimmunity in the pediatric age group represents an evolving constellation of various syndromes distinct from the adult age group. One of the rarely described pathogenic auto-antibodies (ab) is the one directed against glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD). While its pathogenic role is controversial, literature concerning adult patients abounds with heterogeneous presentations with epilepsy often as part of limbic encephalitis or chronic temporal lobe epilepsy and cerebellar ataxia accompanying endocrinopathies or paraneoplastic disorders. Diagnosis is often delayed until late adulthood. The authors report hitherto under-reported syndromes in the pediatric age group. The first case was a 3-year-old boy with sub-acute myoclonus-ataxia following a flu-like illness akin to para-infectious cerebellitis. The second case was a 7-year-old girl with longstanding chronic extratemporal partial epilepsy and electrical status epilepticus in sleep (ESES) with right hemiparesis and developmental delay. Investigations revealed two-four fold elevations in titres of GAD-65-ab. The absence of systemic diseases like diabetes and the dramatic clinical response to steroids as well as intravenous immunoglobulin in both the cases argued for GAD-ab mediated neuronal injury rather than a chance association. The concern exists regarding other potentially co-existent auto-ab to gamma-amino butyric acid and glycine receptors, and demonstration of intrathecal synthesis of GADab would be ideal. This entity should be contemplated in children presenting with acute/ sub-acute onset episodic or progressive ataxia or refractory cryptogenic focal epilepsy syndromes, epileptic encephalopathy such as ESES and worsening neurological deficits. These children ought to be maintained on regular follow-up for monitoring evolution of other autoimmune disorders in adult life.
Megalodon, mako shark and planktonic foraminifera from the continental shelf off Portugal and their age

A turbidite specimen collected by a fishing net off the Portuguese coast presents some fossils. A process of condensation is revealed by Late Pliocene and Quaternary typical foraminifera. The matrix is phosphatised and rather iron-rich with small quantities of manganese and zinc and even less copper. Based on planktonic foraminifera in depressions of cetacean skulls from the same area, the fossilization of shark and cetaceans is likely to have occurred in the uppermost Messinian to Early Pliocene. Lack of benthic foraminifera also point out to more or less deep environments, while a scallop, Mimachlamys varia, indicates nearby rocky environments. The occurrence of Megaselachus megalodon excludes an older than Miocene age and most probably, even an older than Middle Miocene age. Its very advanced evolution stage is consistent with a Pliocene age. The mako shark, Isurus cf. oxyrhinchus is recorded here for the first time. The shark association represents a seemingly moderately warm indicator as megalodon and Isurus are essentially temperate water dwellers, while no warm water form is known. Hence temperate to moderately warm conditions seem to have prevailed.
Corpus-based Transitivity Biases in People with Aphasia

This study investigated whether people with aphasia (PWA) retain verb transitivity biases in expressive language. Transitivity, which represents a rudimentary division among simple sentence structures, is a fundamental language feature for our characterization of people with aphasia’s (PWA) basic grammatical profile. However, no studies have yet detailed PWA’s transitivity biases, given limited sample sizes of PWA (which especially restrict analyses of spontaneous speech). The current study analyzed 236 transcribed interviews of PWA from AphasiaBank and found that that PWA demonstrated identical transitive biases to controls. Further, PWA produced more intransitive verbs than transitive verbs overall. In ungrammatical productions, PWA’s error rates were both higher in sentence structures that conflicted with verb bias and highest when an intransitive verb was attempted in a transitive structure. Thus, these findings indicate that PWA are sensitive to verb bias and verb complexity within expressive language. These effects are consistent with previous literature concerning PWA’s sensitivity to verb bias in receptive tasks and to verb complexity in verb retrieval tasks.