Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Output Gap Measure for the Euro Area: Exploiting Country-Level and Cross-Sectional Data Heterogeneity

This paper proposes a methodology to estimate the euro-area output gap by taking advantage of two types of data heterogeneity. On the one hand, the method uses information on real GDP, inflation, and the unemployment rate for each member state; on the other hand, it jointly considers this information for all the euro-area countries to extract an area-wide output gap measure. The setup is an unobserved components model that theorizes a common cycle across euro-area economies in addition to country-specific cyclical components. I estimate the model with Bayesian methods using data for the 19 countries of the euro area from 2000:Q1 through 2017:Q2 and perform model comparisons across different specifications of the output trend. The estimation of the model preferred by the data indicates that, because of negative shocks to trend output during global the financial crisis, output remained slightly above potential in that period, but an output gap of about negative 3 percent emerged during the European debt crisis. At the end of the sample period, output is estimated to be about 1 percent above potential.
Depth of cure, flexural strength, microhardness, and cytotoxicity of light activated pit and fissure resin-based sealant experimental prototypes

Objective To evaluate the light-activated pit and fissure resin-based sealant prototypes (LAS-clear and LAS-opaque) for depth of cure, flexural strength, microhardness, and cytotoxicity compared with commercial light-activated pit and fissure resin-based sealants. Material and methods LAS-clear, LAS-opaque, Delton-clear (DC), Helioseal clear (HC), Helioseal opaque (HO), and Clinpro (CL) were investigated for depth of cure per ISO 6874:2005. Their flexural strength and microhardness were also evaluated. Cytotoxicity was determined using an MTT based colorimetric assay. Statistical analysis was performed using the SPSS program. Results All materials met ISO 6874:2005 requirements. The mean depth of cure of DC, HC, and LAS-clear were significantly higher than that of HO, CL, and LAS-opaque (p < 0.05). The flexural strength and microhardness values were not significantly different between each group. The MTT assay showed that CL conditioned media significantly reduced cell viability at 24 and 48 hours compared with the control and other sealants (p < 0.05). LAS-clear, LAS-opaque, DC, HC, and HO conditioned media slightly decreased cell viability. Conclusions LAS-clear and LAS-opaque met the ISO 6874:2005 requirements for depth of cure. LAS-clear and LAS-opaque conditioned medium were biocompatible with gingival fibroblasts. (CU Dent J. 2016;39:43-52) Key words: Cytotoxicity; depth of cure; flexural strength; microhardness; resin-based dental sealant
Histopathological Effects of Bifidobacterium spp. in Balbc Mice Infected with Salmonella typhimurium

The present study involved isolation and characterization of Bifidobacterium from stool of healthy persons and infants. A total of 66 isolates has been collected randomly from healthy persons and infants in Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf city during the period 1/2012-4/2012. Identification of isolates has been carried out depending on their characters on selective media, biochemical tests and polymerase chain reaction technique (PCR). Our results showed that all 66 isolates belong to Bifidobacterium spp. , while none of these isolate were belong to B. infantis according to the results of PCR. Furthermore, to explain the role of Bifidobacterium spp. in decreasing infection by pathogenic bacteria, experimental study has been carried out. Salmonella typhimurium were used as pathogens that infect Balb/C mice which were used as a model for experimental study. The result revealed that mice which administered with Bifidobacterium and infected with S. typhimurium showed no important clinical signs of salmonellosis with no pathological of histopathological change when compared with mice that were infected with S. typhimurium (-ve control). Also, the result revealed that Gentamicin had little effect in the treatment of mice administered with Bifidobacterium and infected with S. typhimurium, when compared with mice infected with S. typhimurium only.
Genetic Structure of the Bovicola ovis (Mallophaga: Trichodectidae) in Southwestern Australia

The sheep biting louse, Bovicola ovis (Schrank), is an economically important, worldwide ectoparasite of sheep. In Australia, up to 30% of sheep flocks are infested with lice. The usual method of control has been synthetic pyrethroids applied as pour-on along the back of the sheep, but treatment failures have become widespread since 1985 because of the development of resistance. We used allozyme markers to study the distribution of genetic variation within and among populations of lice on different farms in Western Australia. Genetic variation within populations was similar to previously reported values for other ectoparasitic arthropods. Heterozygote deficiencies were found at 1 locus in a number of population and another 2 loci in 1 other population. However, another variable locus conformed to Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and there was little evidence of extensive linkage disequilibrium between loci. Further studies are necessary to establish the breeding system. Genetic differences among populations were not related to geographic separation, which is consistent with an island model of population structure. A small but significant proportion (2.8%) of the total genetic variation was distributed among populations' equivalent under the island model to a gene flow of 8.7 individuals exchanged per generation. The implications of this result are discussed in terms of controlling and managing synthetic pyrethroid resistance in sheep biting lice.
Page 1 of 29 VIOLENCE BRIEF INTERVENTIONS: A RAPID REVIEW [Published in Aggression and Violent Behaviour] doi:10.1016/j.avb.2014.09.015

Provision of a Violence Brief Intervention (VBI) to young men undergoing treatment for a violent injury may represent a teachable moment for the prevention of future interpersonal violence in Scotland. Prior to intervention design, a rapid review of the research literature was necessary to examine existing programmes. After title and abstract screening, eight distinct VBIs were identified from full texts. Whilst none of the programmes were a perfect match for our intervention goals, they did demonstrate the potential effectiveness of brief interventions for violence prevention at both cognitive and behavioural levels. Key themes of successful interventions included brief motivational interviewing as an effective method of engaging with at-risk participants and encouraging change, the utility of social norms approaches for correcting peer norm misperceptions, the usefulness of working with victims of violence in medical settings (particularly oral and maxillofacial surgeries), the importance of addressing the role of alcohol after violent injury, the advantages of a computer-therapist hybrid model of delivery, and the need for adequate follow-up evaluation as part of a randomised control trial. This information has been used to design a VBI which is currently under evaluation.
Cost Pass-Through of the EU Emissions Allowances: Examining the European Petroleum Markets

This paper explores the ability of European refineries to pass-through costs associated with the introduction of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). We estimated a sequence of vector error correction models (VECM) within a multi-national setting which covers 14 EU member states. Using weekly data at the country level, this paper finds a significant influence of prices for European Union Allowances (EUAs) on unleaded petrol retail prices during the trial phase of the EU ETS from 2005 to 2007. Petrol prices are found to be elastic with respect to crude oil prices and exchange rates but rather inelastic with respect to carbon costs. The long-run elasticity of petrol prices with respect to the EUA prices typically ranges between 0.01% and 0.09%. Furthermore, by computing the variance decomposition our analysis shows that a significant fraction of petrol price changes in Austria, Germany, France and Spain can be explained by changes in allowances prices (between 10% and 20%).
Nostalgia as enabler of self continuity.

In 1969, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young released their self-titled album containing the classic song "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. " A particularly striking lyric from this song recommended: "Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now. " This evocative line suggests a question with far-reaching social psychological implications. How does a person's sense of the past contribute to (or detract from) the perceived continuity of his or her identity? This chapter entertains that question. We are concerned with the continuity within or between two fundamental sources of identity: the individual and collective selves. In particular, we focus on the temporal continuity between individual selves, between individual and collective selves, and between collective selves. We begin by defining the two types of self, specifying their possible relations, and asking how the seeming continuity within or between them is maintained. We proceed to argue that nostalgia is an important mechanism that enables this continuity, and we support our argument with a review of the empirical literature.
More than Politics: Ability and Ideology in the British Appellate Committee

We argue that a model of judicial behavior that accounts for differences in justices’ ability and ideology provides a fruitful alternative for the empirical analysis of judicial decision-making around the world, and illustrate this by focusing on the case of the United Kingdom. We show that the model explains the decisions of the Lords of Appeal remarkably well, and improves the fit of a purely ideological model. We use our estimates to tackle previously unaddressed questions about the relative role of justices’ preferences and ability in the Appellate Committee. (JEL C11, C13, D71, K40.)
Detection of second-order nonlinear optical magnetization by mapping normalized Stokes parameters

A measurable magnetic (nonlocal) contribution to the second harmonic generation (SHG) of nonmagnetic materials is an intriguing issue related to chiral materials, such as biomolecules. Here we report the detection of an intensity-dependent optically induced magnetization of a chiral bacteriorhodopsin film under femtosecond pulse excitation (830 nm) and far from the material’s resonance. The analysis of the pump intensity-dependent noncollinear SHG signal, by means of the polarization map of normalized Stokes parameters, allows one to improve the detection of the nonlinear optical magnetization M(2ω) contribution to the SHG signal.
Brazilian Portuguese-English bilingualism does not afect metalinguistic awareness of L1 constraints in two argument structure constructions

In the present study we investigated a corollary of the multicompetence hypothesis as a description of language representation in bilingualism. According to this hypothesis, bilingualism entails a state of linguistic knowledge that does not correspond either to L1 or L2 norms. Previous studies examining online language processing of sentences in Portuguese that simulated argument structures constructions of English have shown a departure from the restrictions of the L1 grammar (Portuguese), which supports the multicompetence hypothesis. The purpose of this study was to explore whether such departure from the L1 would be observed in a psycholinguistic task that taps bilinguals' intentional attention focus on the form of linguistic expressions in their L1, therefore depicting L1 metalinguistic awareness. The results reveal that the bilingualism effects detected during real time sentence processing do not extend to metalinguistic awareness, therefore suggesting that such effects are evanescent, and most likely implicit in nature.
A UNIFIED CHARACTERIZATION OF PROXIMAL ALGORITHMS VIA THE CONJUGATE OF REGULARIZATION TERM

We consider proximal algorithms with generalized regularization term. General requirements for the conjugate of regularization term are proposed to make the corresponding proximal algorithm globally converge. Applying the proposed technique to the case of φ-divergence, we have proved that φ-divergence with nonsmooth kernel function is acceptable as a regularization term.
Effective Family-Based Interventions for Adolescents With Substance Use Problems: A Systematic Review

Objective: This article is a systematic review identifying effective family-based interventions for adolescent substance use problems. Method: A substantive review of each intervention is conducted using guidelines for effective treatment for substance use problems. Additionally, a methodological review of each study is done using criteria for empirically validated treatments. Results: Treatment components of five interventions—Brief Strategic Family Therapy (BSFT), Family Behavior Therapy, Functional Family Therapy, Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT), and Multisystemic Treatment—were consistent with a majority of guidelines for effective treatment. Notable exceptions include no aftercare and poor treatment retention. MDFT and BSFT met criteria of probably efficacious treatment, whereas the other interventions represented promising treatments. Moreover, MDFT demonstrated clinically significant changes in substance use and large effect sizes at posttreatment and follow-up. Conclusion: To increase provision of effective adolescent substance abuse treatment, social workers should use these research findings to guide implementation.
The Possible Modification of the Response of the Wild Type to Recurrent Mutations

The consideration that the wild population is immensely larger than the numbers bred experimentally even in Drosophila, and that the duration of the species is still more disproportionate to the experimental periods, leads to the conclusion that the majority of the mutations which we can hope to observe in cultures must have occurred previously with very great total frequency in the wild species. The reaction of the wild type to mutations is known in many cases to be capable of a somewhat rapid modification in experimental conditions, by the selection through differential viability of factors capable of modifying this response. It may be calculated that with mutation rates of the order of one in a million the corresponding selection in the state of nature, though extremely slow, can not safely be neglected in the case of the heterozygotes. The observed behavior of multiple allelomorphs largely supports, though that of specific modifiers seems to oppose, the view that complete dominance generally may be regarded as a product of such selective modification.
A SLIP Model with Swing Dynamics Can Predict More Gaits

Animals are known to adopt different gaits at varying forward speeds. In this research we used a model based approach to reveal the differences between these gaits. Solutions of a passive SLIP like model for different bipedal gaits are identified. An exhaustive search of the entire initial space was conducted with this simplistic passive model to show there is a limited number of possible gaits at a given forward speed. These results are further compared with a more realistic multibody active model to demonstrate that they share the same underlying dynamical mode of elastic oscillations.
Streamlines, ray tracing and production tomography: generalization to compressible flow

We exploit an analogy between streamlines and seismic ray tracing to develop an efficient formalism for integrating dynamic data into high-resolution reservoir models. Utilizing concepts from asymptotic ray theory in seismic and diffusive electromagnetic imaging, we generalize the streamline approach to com- pressible flow. A 'diffusive' streamline time-of-flight is introduced for transient pressure calculations. Production data integration is carried out in a manner analogous to seismic tomography and waveform imaging. The power and versatility of our approach is illustrated using synthetic examples that utilize transient pressure, tracer and multiphase production history. A field example from a heterogeneous carbonate reservoir demonstrates the practical feasibility of our approach.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THIN FILM PIEZOELECTRIC MATERIALS AND PROCESSING DESIGN FOR A BETTER ENERGY HARVESTING MEMS

Piezoelectric materials are essential for harvesting energy from mechanical vibrations. Thin films of piezoelectric materials including AlN and binary perovskite compounds PZT are widely studied for a fabrication of energy harvesting MEMS. The piezoelectric materials have held a key position in the energy harvesting devices. Varieties of bulk piezoelectric ceramic materials are studied and used in practice for the piezoelectric sensors and/or actuators. However, piezoelectric properties of the thin film materials are different from bulk properties due to their structural differences. The characters of the thin film piezoelectric materials are not fully understood yet. For making a better energy harvesting device, a fundamental discussion will be necessary for the thin film piezoelectric materials. In this paper, first the fundamentals of thin film piezoelectric materials and the process design are discussed, and then novel piezoelectric thin films of PZT-based ternary perovskite compounds are proposed as an example for making the improved energy harvesting MEMS.
Small Population Size Of The Pribilof Rock Sandpiper Confirmed Through Distance-Sampling Surveys In Alaska

Abstract. The Rock Sandpiper (Calidris ptilocnemis) is endemic to the Bering Sea region and unique among shorebirds in the North Pacific for wintering at high latitudes. The nominate subspecies, the Pribilof Rock Sandpiper (C. p. ptilocnemis), breeds on four isolated islands in the Bering Sea and appears to spend the winter primarily in Cook Inlet, Alaska. We used a stratified systematic sampling design and line-transect method to survey the entire breeding range of this population during springs 2001–2003. Densities were up to four times higher on the uninhabited and more northerly St. Matthew and Hall islands than on St. Paul and St. George islands, which both have small human settlements and introduced reindeer herds. Differences in density, however, appeared to be more related to differences in vegetation than to anthropogenic factors, raising some concern for prospective effects of climate change. We estimated the total population at 19 832 birds (95% CI 17 853–21 930), ranking it among the smallest of North American shorebird populations. To determine the vulnerability of C. p. ptilocnemis to anthropogenic and stochastic environmental threats, future studies should focus on determining the amount of gene flow among island subpopulations, the full extent of the subspecies' winter range, and the current trajectory of this small population.
ORGANIC ACIDS, SUGARS, PHENOLIC COMPOUNDS AND ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY OF Malus floribunda coccinella FRUIT, PEEL AND FLESH

Malus floribunda coccinella is a landscape tree that is generally planted for its pinky flowers and small reddish fruits. The red-fleshed fruits, called crab apples, are rich in anthocyanins and are assumed as an environmental pollution material during the fruit bearing season. The aims of this research were to determine the organic acids, sugars, sugar:acid ratio, color, phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity of the fruit and also to identify the phenolic compounds, monomeric anthocyanins content and antioxidant activities in the peel, flesh and whole fruit. Malic acid (25.394 g kg –1 FW) was the main organic acid of the fruit. In fruits, amounts of sucrose, glucose and fructose were found to be 0.497, 0.504 and 4.334 g 100 g –1 FW, respectively. Highest total phenolic concentration and antioxidant activity values were observed in the peel among the fractions, while protocatechuic and cinnamic acids, rutin, isorhamnetin-3-glucoside, quercetin, procyanidin B1, (+)-catechin and cyanidin-3-galactoside were predominant phenolics of the peel. Highest amounts of chlorogenic acid and (-)-epicatechin were determined in the flesh. Cyanidin-3-galactoside concentration in the flesh was approximately half the amount of that in the peel.
Effects of surface charge on the anomalous light scattering from metallic nanoparticles

The effects of extraneous surface charges on the anomalous scattering from metallic nanoparticles are studied via an application of the extended Mie theory by Bohren and Hunt. Due to the sensitivity of the higher multipolar resonance on the surface charges, it is found that quenching of the anomalous resonance can be observed with presence of only a modest amount of charges on these particles. The observed effects thus provide a rather sensitive mechanism for the monitoring of the neutrality of these nanoparticles using far field scattering approaches.
FIFTY YEARS LATER: THE LEGACY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

This paper assesses the legacy of the Civil Rights Act over the past 50 years, reviewing its history, scope, and impact on wage, employment, and segregation outcomes of the Act's five protected classes. In addition to improving outcomes for protected classes, the Act launched a period of expanded civil rights legislation and established a framework that allows expansion of coverage through judicial interpretation without requiring passage of new laws. Applications include prohibiting sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination and protection against color discrimination separately from race discrimination, which may be increasingly salient with increased immigration and with a multirace population.
When Simple n-gram Models Outperform Syntactic Approaches: Discriminating between Dutch and Flemish

In this paper we present the results of our participation in the Discriminating between Dutch and Flemish in Subtitles VarDial 2018 shared task. We try techniques proven to work well for discriminating between language varieties as well as explore the potential of using syntactic features, i.e. hierarchical syntactic subtrees. We experiment with different combinations of features. Discriminating between these two languages turned out to be a very hard task, not only for a machine: human performance is only around 0.51 F1 score; our best system is still a simple Naive Bayes model with word unigrams and bigrams. The system achieved an F1 score (macro) of 0.62, which ranked us 4th in the shared task.
Employer Participation in Active Labour Market Policy: from Reactive Gatekeepers to Proactive Strategic Partners

Abstract Active labour market policy (ALMP) is a well-established strategy but one aspect is greatly neglected – employer participation – about which there is a lack of systematic evidence. The question of why and how employers participate in ALMP, and whether there may be some shift from employers solely being passive recipients of job-ready candidates to having a more proactive and strategic role, is addressed by drawing on new research into Talent Match, a contemporary UK employability programme which places particular emphasis on employer involvement. The research findings point to a conceptual distinction between employers’ roles as being reactive gatekeepers to jobs and/or being proactive strategic partners, with both evident. It is argued that the Talent Match programme demonstrates potential to benefit employers, jobseekers and programme providers, with devolution of policy to the local level a possible way forward. The conclusion, however, is that the barrier to wider replication is not necessarily a problem of practice but of centralised control of policy and, in particular, commitment to a supply-side approach. Empirical, conceptual and policy contributions are made to this under-researched topic.