Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Frequency of Price Adjustment and New Keynesian Business Cycle Dynamics

The Calvo pricing model that lies at the heart of many New Keynesian business cycle models has been roundly criticized for being inconsistent both with time series data on inflation and with micro-data on the frequency of price changes. In this paper we show that a modified version of the Gali and Gertler (1999) model, which allows for "rule-of-thumb" price setters, and whose structure can be interpreted in terms of menu costs and information gathering/processing costs, largely resolves both criticisms. Moreover, the resulting Phillips curve shares the explanatory power of the partial-indexation model and dominates the full-indexation model and the Calvo model. Estimating a small-scale New Keynesian business cycle model, our results indicate that the share of firms that change prices each quarter is just over 60 percent, broadly in line with the Bils and Klenow (2004) study of Bureau of Labor Statistics price data. Reflecting the importance of information gathering/processing costs, we find that most firms that change prices are rule-of-thumb price setters. Finally, compared to specifications containing either the Calvo model or the full-indexation model, the data provide much greater support for the Gali-Gertler model.
High-Reynolds-number turbulence in small apparatus: grid turbulence in cryogenic liquids

Liquid helium at 4.2 K has a viscosity that is about 40 times smaller than that of water at room temperature, and about 600 times smaller than that of air at atmospheric pressure. It is therefore a convenient fluid for generating in a table-top apparatus turbulent flows at high Reynolds numbers that require large air and water facilities. Here, we produce turbulence behind towed grids in a liquid helium chamber that is 5 cm2 in cross-section at mesh Reynolds numbers of up to 7×105. Liquid nitrogen is intermediate in its viscosity as well as refrigeration demands, and so we also exploit its use to generate towed-grid turbulence up to mesh Reynolds number of about 2×104. In both instances, we map two-dimensional fields of velocity vectors using particle image velocimetry, and compare the data with those in water and air.
An assessment of the role of perceived benefits, barriers and self-efficacy in predicting dietary behavior in male and female high school students in the city of Izeh, Iran

Introduction: Paying attention to improving the nutritional status of adolescents can be one of the most effective fundamental measures for preventing chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases in later life. Identifying the predicting elements in different behaviors is one of the most effective ways that can be considered in prevention programs in different communities, particularly in developing countries. The purpose of was to determine the perceived efficacy, benefits and barriers related to a healthy nutrition pattern and the relation of these variables with a healthy diet in male and female high school students in Izeh city. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive and analytic study conducted throughout high schools in Izeh City, the subjects were 500 students (300 girls and 200 boys) from the 1390-91 school years who were selected through the multistage random sampling method; the acquired data was then studied and analyzed. The data for this study was gathered through a multi-sectional questionnaire (that included demographic characteristics, self-efficacy, perceived benefits and barriers). The Independent t-test, Spearman's Correlation, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient and Linear Regression were used to interpret and analyze the data. Results: Data analysis showed that the mean age of male participants was 15.67 ± 0.95 years and females 15.86 ± 1.16 years. The mean score for healthy eating patterns in male students was 46.83 ± 14.86 and in female students 44.20 ± 14.16 respectively. The mean score for perceived benefits of healthy eating in girls was significantly higher than that in boys. There was a direct meaningful relationship between the mean score of benefits and perceived self-efficacy with the healthy eating behaviors in the two sexes, (P < 0.001). The results of the multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the most important predictive factors in the students’ healthy eating behavior are self-efficacy and perceived benefits respectively and that perceived barriers is not an influencing predictor in healthy eating patterns. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that many factors influence students’ diet pattern and undeniably the role of these factors are not alike in the two sexes. The results also showed that perceived self-efficacy and benefits of healthy nutrition strengthens healthy eating behavior in students and thus these factors should be considered by health authorities in the country in any future programming.
Portal Vein Thrombosis Is a Potentially Preventable Complication in Clinical Islet Transplantation

Percutaneous transhepatic portal access avoids surgery but is rarely associated with bleeding or portal venous thrombosis (PVT). We herein report our large, single‐center experience of percutaneous islet implantation and evaluate risk factors of PVT and graft function. Prospective data were collected on 268 intraportal islet transplants (122 subjects). A portal venous Doppler ultrasound was obtained on Days 1 and 7 posttransplant. Therapeutic heparinization, complete ablation of the portal catheter tract with Avitene paste and limiting packed cell volume (PCV) to <5 mL completely prevented any portal thrombosis in the most recent 101 islet transplant procedures over the past 5 years. In the previous cumulative experience, partial thrombosis did not affect islet function. Standard liver volume correlated negatively (r =−0.257, p < 0.001) and PCV correlated positively with portal pressure rise (r = 0.463, p < 0.001). Overall, partial portal thrombosis occurred after 10 procedures (overall incidence 3.7%, most recent 101 patient incidence 0%). There were no cases of complete thrombosis and no patient developed sequelae of portal hypertension. In conclusion, portal thrombosis is a preventable complication in clinical islet transplantation, provided therapeutic anticoagulation is maintained and PCV is limited to <5 mL.
Nephridial and gonoduct distribution patterns in Nerillidae (Annelida: Polychaeta) examined by tubulin staining and cLSM

The distribution and configuration of nephridia and gonoducts are described for seven species from seven genera of the interstitial polychaete family Nerillidae. The ciliated nephridia and gonoducts were identified by tubulin staining and examined with a confocal laser scanning microscope. The following species of the seven to nine‐segmented nerillids were examined: Leptonerilla prospera, Nerilla antennata (nine segments); Nerillidium mediterraneum, Trochonerilla mobilis, Gen. sp. A (eight segments); and Aristonerilla brevis, Paranerilla limicola (seven segments). Two of the examined species are hermaphroditic (N. mediterraneum and Gen. sp. A). Segmented nephridia can be found from the first to the last segment, with a total of two to five pairs. One to three pairs of segmented spermioducts are present in all species. One pair of gonoducts is found in all species, except for P. limicola, where they are absent. Nephridia vary in length from half to almost twice the length of a segment and may be curled up in loops. In A. brevis and P. limicola the nephridia are discontinuously ciliated. The distribution and configuration of spermioducts and gonoducts are also variable, although to a lesser extent. The spermioduct distribution is generally consistent within genera and therefore of systematic significance. Nephridia and gonoducts are never found together in the same segments, and the results indicate that gonoducts and nephridia have developed from the same anlagen. The distribution patterns of nephridia and gonoducts are discussed with respect to segmentation, systematics, and development. J. Morphol. 261:259–269, 2004. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Co-occurrence rate networks: towards separate training for undirected graphical models

Dependence is a universal phenomenon which can be observed everywhere. In machine learning, probabilistic graphical models (PGMs) represent dependence relations with graphs. PGMs find wide applications in natural language processing (NLP), speech processing, computer vision, biomedicine, information retrieval, etc. Many traditional models, such as hidden Markov models (HMMs), Kalman filters, can be put under the umbrella of PGMs. The central idea of PGMs is to decompose (factorize) a joint probability into a product of local factors. Learning, inference and storage can be conducted efficiently over the factorization representation. In this thesis, we propose a novel framework motivated by the Minimum Shared Information Principle (MSIP): We try to find a factorization in which the information shared between factors is minimum. In other words, we try to make factors as independent as possible. The benefit by doing this is that we can train factors separately without paying a lot of efforts to guarantee consistency between them. To achieve this goal, we develop a theoretical framework called co-occurrence rate networks (CRNs) to obtain such a factorization. Experimental results on three important natural language processing tasks show that our separate training method is two orders of magnitude faster than conditional random fields, while achieving competitive quality (often better on the overall quality metric F1). The second contribution of this thesis is applying PGMs to a real-world NLP application: open relation extraction (ORE). In open relation extraction, two entities in a sentence are given, and the goal is to automatically extract their relation expression. ORE is a core technique, especially in the age of big data, for transforming unstructured information into structured data. We propose our model SimpleIE for this task. The basic idea is to decompose an extraction pattern into a sequence of simplification operations (components). The benefit by doing this is that these components can be re-combined in a new way to generate new extraction patterns. Experimental results on three benchmark data sets show that SimpleIE boosts recall and F1 by at least 15% comparing with seven ORE systems.
Utility of the PedsQL Rheumatology Module as an Outcome Measure in Juvenile Fibromyalgia

The PedsQL rheumatology module is currently the only available measure of disease‐specific quality of life for children and adolescents with juvenile fibromyalgia (FM), but limited information has been published about the psychometric properties of the instrument, specifically in juvenile FM. The objective of this study was to assess the reliability, validity, and sensitivity to change of the 5 scales (pain and hurt, daily activities, treatment, worry, and communication) of the patient and parent proxy versions of the PedsQL rheumatology module in the context of a randomized controlled trial in juvenile FM.
Protein Kinase C-Dependent Phosphorylation Regulates the Cell Cycle-Inhibitory Function of the p73 Carboxy Terminus Transactivation Domain

ABSTRACT The transcription factor p73, a member of the p53 family of proteins, is involved in the regulation of cell cycle progression and apoptosis. However, the regulatory mechanisms controlling the distinct roles for p73 in these two processes have remained unclear. Here, we report that p73 is able to induce cell cycle arrest independently of its amino-terminal transactivation domain, whereas this domain is crucial for p73 proapoptotic functions. We also characterized a second transactivation domain in the carboxy terminus of p73 within amino acid residues 381 to 399. This carboxy terminus transactivation domain was found to preferentially regulate genes involved in cell cycle progression. Moreover, its activity is regulated throughout the cell cycle and modified by protein kinase C-dependent phosphorylation at serine residue 388. Our results suggest that this novel posttranslational modification within the p73 carboxy terminus transactivation domain is involved in the context-specific guidance of p73 toward the selective induction of cell cycle arrest.
No significant association between the promoter region polymorphisms of factor VII gene and risk of venous thrombosis in cancer patients.

UNLABELLED Factor VII (FVII) plays an important role in blood coagulation. The role of common polymorphisms influencing the FVII plasma levels in thromboembolic disorders has been evaluated but there is no published data related to the effect of FVII gene polymorphisms on the venous thrombosis risk in cancer. AIM To investigate the association of three common functional polymorphisms in the promoter region of FVII gene: a decanucleotide insertion at position-323 (-323ins10-bp), a G to T substitution at position-401 (-401GT), and a G to A substitution at position-402 (-401GT) with venous thrombosis in cancer patients. MATERIALS AND METHODS The study included 60 cancer patients with venous thromboembolism (VTE) (group 1) and 130 cancer patients without VTE (group 2). Genotyping of -323ins10-bp, -401GT, and -402GA polymorphisms in the promoter region of FVII gene was performed by the method of single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis and sequencing. Factor V Leiden (FVL) was also determined in all cases. RESULTS The frequency of FVL was significantly greater in cancer patients with VTE compared with group 2 patients (p FVII gene, the distributions of genotypes and allele frequencies were not significantly different between two groups of patients ( p > 0.05). The results did not change significantly after the exclusion of patients carrying the FVL (p > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS The screening for the -323ins10-bp, -401GT, and -402GA olymorphisms of FVII gene did not contribute to a meaningful diagnostic nvestigation in cancer patients with venous thrombosis.
Characterization of the adenosine receptor in porcine coronary arteries

1 Relaxant responses of ring preparations from porcine ventricular coronary arteries to adenosine and various stable adenosine analogues were investigated in vitro. 2 The adenosine analogues did not produce contraction but elicited almost complete relaxation of coronary arteries preconstricted with 3 μm prostaglandin F2α (PGF2α), even after removal of the endothelium. 3 The order of potency, was 5′‐N‐ethylcarboxamide‐adenosine (NECA) > 2‐(2‐phenylethylamino)5′‐N‐ethylcarboxamide‐adenosine (2‐PEA‐NECA) > 2‐phenylamino‐adenosine (CV‐1808) > N6‐[S(−)−1‐phenyl‐2‐propyl]adenosine (S‐PIA) > N6‐[S(+)‐1‐phenyl‐2‐propyl]adenosine (S‐PIA) > N6‐cyclopentyl‐adenosine (CPA) > adenosine > ATP = ADP which suggested the presence of adenosine A2‐receptor subtypes. 4 There was an excellent correlation between the calculated pD2 values on coronary arteries and the pKD values at adenosine A2 binding sites, whereas no correlation was obtained when the pD2 values were compared to the pKD values at adenosine A1‐binding sites on membranes from porcine striata. 5 The relaxant effects of adenosine and its analogues were competitively antagonized by 8‐(P‐sulphophenyl)‐theophylline (8‐SPT), producing pA2 values similar to the respective pKD value of the antagonist at adenosine A2 binding sites. 6 It is suggested that the porcine coronary artery possesses adenosine A2 receptors which seem to be similar to the adenosine A2 binding site in pig striatum, whereas no evidence was obtained for the presence of adenosine A1 receptors.
Comparative effectiveness of injectable penicillin versus a combination of penicillin and gentamicin in children with pneumonia characterised by indrawing in Kenya: protocol for an observational study

Introduction WHO treatment guidelines are widely recommended for guiding treatment for millions of children with pneumonia every year across multiple low-income and middle-income countries. Guidelines are based on synthesis of available evidence that provides moderate certainty in evidence of effects for forms of pneumonia that can result in hospitalisation. However, trials have included fewer children from Africa than other settings, and it is suggested that African children with pneumonia have higher mortality. Thus, despite improving access to recommended treatments and deployment with high coverage of childhood vaccines, pneumonia remains one of the top causes of mortality for children in Kenya. Establishing whether there are benefits of alternative treatment regimens to help reduce mortality would require pragmatic clinical trials. However, these remain relatively expensive and time consuming. This protocol describes an approach to using secondary analysis of a new, large observational dataset as a potentially cheaper and quicker way to examine the comparative effectiveness of penicillin versus penicillin plus gentamicin in treatment of indrawing pneumonia. Addressing this question is important, as although it is now recommended that this form of pneumonia is treated with oral medication as an outpatient, it remains associated with non-trivial mortality that may be higher outside trial populations. Methods and analysis We will use a large observational dataset that captures data on all admissions to 13 Kenyan county hospitals. These data represent the findings of clinicians in practice and, because the system was developed for large observational research, pose challenges of non-random treatment allocation and missing data. To overcome these challenges, this analysis will use a rigorous approach to study design, propensity score methods and multiple imputation to minimise bias. Ethics and dissemination The primary data are held by hospitals participating in the Kenyan Clinical Information Network project with de-identifed data shared with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI)-Wellcome Trust Research Programme for agreed analyses. The use of data for the analysis described received ethical clearance from the KEMRI scientific and ethical review committee. The findings of this analysis will be published.
Measuring functionality and productivity in Web-based applications: a case study

We explore the variation of the cost of writing code when object oriented framework based development of Web applications is encountered for the first time. Managers need such information to justify their investments in innovative development strategies. Size measurements are essential in this task and a number of metrics, namely: lines of code, classical function points, and object oriented function points, are employed. It is argued that lines of code and object oriented function points are more suitable in this case. Data analysis reveals that learning influences mainly the cost of writing new code, consisting of continuous calls to components provided by the framework. We also explore the applicability of an already proposed effort prediction model that is based on different reuse types. A cost estimation model is the by-product of this study, providing a helpful tool for managing the first projects in which the framework is employed.
A trace study of BitTorrent P2P file distribution with downloading-side performance measurement and analysis

The peer-to-peer networking technologies and systems provide a rapid and scalable content distribution mechanism for the increasing client population to access an explosive volume of media files on the Internet. Whereas the BitTorrent protocol and its derivatives are the most popular peer-to-peer file sharing applications, this paper proposes the performance measurement and analysis of BitTorrent protocols with an extensive volume of real trace logs. This examination reveals many new characteristics and information into the virtue of BitTorrent protocols in terms of downloading-side metrics, including overall download time and download bandwidth utilization, which have not been well specified in prior works that mainly focused on system-oriented and uploading-side performance measurements.
Sources of regional variation in Medicare Part D drug spending.

BACKGROUND Sources of regional variation in spending for prescription drugs under Medicare Part D are poorly understood, and such variation may reflect differences in health status, use of effective treatments, or selection of branded drugs over lower-cost generics. METHODS We analyzed 2008 Medicare data for 4.7 million beneficiaries for prescription-drug use and expenditures overall and in three drug categories: angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs), 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors (statins), and selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs). Differences in per capita expenditures across hospital-referral regions (HRRs) were decomposed into annual prescription volume and cost per prescription. The ratio of prescriptions filled as branded drugs to all prescriptions filled was calculated. We adjusted all measures for demographic, socioeconomic, and health-status differences. RESULTS Mean adjusted per capita pharmaceutical spending ranged from $2,413 in the lowest to $3,008 in the highest quintile of HRRs. Most (75.9%) of that difference was attributable to the cost per prescription ($53 vs. $63). Regional differences in cost per prescription explained 87.5% of expenditure variation for ACE inhibitors and ARBs and 56.3% for statins but only 36.1% for SSRIs and SNRIs. The ratio of branded-drug to total prescriptions, which correlated highly with cost per prescription, ranged across HRRs from 0.24 to 0.45 overall and from 0.24 to 0.55 for ACE inhibitors and ARBs, 0.29 to 0.60 for statins, and 0.15 to 0.51 for SSRIs and SNRIs. CONCLUSIONS Regional variation in Medicare Part D spending results largely from differences in the cost of drugs selected rather than prescription volume. A reduction in branded-drug use in some regions through modification of Part D plan benefits might lower costs without reducing quality of care. (Funded by the National Institute on Aging and others.).
“Why Do I Feel So Bad?” Childhood Experiences of Emotional Neglect, Negative Affectivity, and Adult Psychiatric Symptoms

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between childhood experiences of emotional neglect, negative affectivity, and adult psychiatric symptoms. Two hundred fifty-two participants aged between 18 and 65 years old completed questionnaires on parental bonding, negative feelings, and current psychiatric symptoms. Correlational analyses showed that childhood emotional neglect, negative affectivity, and psychiatric symptoms were significantly and positively associated. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that female gender, younger age, and negative affectivity predicted the severity of psychiatric symptoms. A mediation analysis showed that scores on negative affectivity fully mediated the relationship between emotional neglect scores and psychiatric symptom scores. The study findings suggest one possible pathway for adult psychopathology. This has its early roots in childhood experiences of emotional neglect, and its actual triggers in negative feelings that are difficult to regulate for people who were emotionally neglected. Educational, clinical, and social implications of this developmental pathway are discussed. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015. v6n6s1p259