Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluating the Psychometric Properties of a Clinical Vocational Rehabilitation Outcome Measurement: The Assessment of Work Performance (AWP)

This study examined the validity and reliability of the Assessment of Work Performance (AWP) using Rasch analysis. The AWP was administered to 365 clients with a variety of work-related problems. Rasch analysis and principal component analysis were used to examine the appropriateness of the rating scales and unidimensionality of AWP items. The person-response validity, internal consistency, targeting appropriateness, and differential item function were also analyzed. The Rasch analysis confirmed the 4-point rating scale, and the item set met the criteria of unidimensionality. The AWP exhibited satisfactory person-response validity and internal consistency. Among the three subdomains, the targeting of item-difficulty was sufficient in the motor skills and process skills subdomains. Differential item functioning was found across gender and diagnoses. This study presented evidence to support that the AWP functioned as a reliable and valid assessment in assessing work performance.
The psychology of climate change communication: a guide for scientists, journalists, educators, political aides, and the interested public

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Synthesis of Au@Pt bimetallic nanoparticles with concave Au nanocuboids as seeds and their enhanced electrocatalytic properties in the ethanol oxidation reaction

Herein, a new type of uniform and well-structured Au@Pt bimetallic nanoparticles (BNPs) with highly active concave Au nanocuboids (NCs) as seeds was successfully synthesized by using the classic seed-mediated method. Electrochemical measurements were conducted to demonstrate their greatly enhanced catalytic performance in the ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR). It was found that the electrochemical performance for Au@Pt BNPs with the concave Au NCs as seeds, which were enclosed by {611}high-index facets, could be seven times higher than that of the Au@Pt bimetallic nanoparticles with regular spherical Au NPs as seeds. Furthermore, our findings show that the morphology and electrocatalytic activity of the Au@Pt BNPs can be tuned simply by changing the compositional ratios of the growth solution. The lower the amount of H2PtCl6 used in the growth solution, the thinner the Pt shell grew, and the more high-index facets of concave Au NCs seeds were exposed in Au@Pt BNPs, leading to higher electrochemical activity. These as-prepared concave Au@Pt BNPs will open up new strategies for improving catalytic efficiency and reducing the use of the expensive and scarce resource of platinum in the ethanol oxidation reaction, and are potentially applicable as electrochemical catalysts for direct ethanol fuel cells.
Detection and Classification of Bleeding Region in WCE Images using Color Feature

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a modern and efficient technology to diagnose complete gastrointestinal tract (GIT) for various abnormalities. Due to long recording time of WCE, it acquires a huge amount of images, which is very tedious for clinical expertise to inspect each and every frame of a complete video footage. In this paper, an automated color feature based technique of bleeding detection is proposed. In case of bleeding, color is a very important feature for an efficient information extraction. Our algorithm is based on statistical color feature analysis and we use support vector machine (SVM) to classify WCE video frames into bleeding and non-bleeding classes with a high processing speed. An experimental evaluation shows that our method has promising bleeding detection performance with sensitivity and specificity higher than existing approaches.
Credit Default Swaps: A Survey

Credit default swaps (CDS) have been growing in importance in the global financial markets. However, their role has been hotly debated, in industry and academia, particularly since the credit crisis of 2007–2009. We review the extant literature on CDS that has accumulated over the past two decades. We divide our survey into seven topics after providing a broad overview in the introduction. The second section traces the historical development of CDS markets and provides an introduction to CDS contract definitions and conventions. The third section discusses the pricing of CDS, from the perspective of no-arbitrage principles, structural, and reduced-form credit risk models. It also summarizes the literature on the determinants of CDS spreads, with a focus on the role of fundamental credit risk factors, liquidity and counterparty risk. The fourth section discusses how the development of the CDS market has affected the characteristics of the bond and equity markets, with an emphasis on market efficiency, price discovery, information flow, and liquidity. Attention is also paid to the CDS-bond basis, the wedge between the pricing of the CDS and its reference bond, and the mispricing between the CDS and the equity market. The fifth section examines the effect of CDS trading on firms' credit and bankruptcy risk, and how it affects corporate financial policy, including bond issuance, capital structure, liquidity management, and corporate governance. The sixth section analyzes how CDS impact the economic incentives of financial intermediaries. The seventh section reviews the growing literature on sovereign CDS and highlights the major differences between the sovereign and corporate CDS markets. In the eight section, we discuss CDS indices, especially the role of synthetic CDS index products backed by residential mortgage-backed securities during the financial crisis. We close with our suggestions for promising future research directions on CDS contracts and markets.
Estimating the Volatility of Discrete Stock Prices

This paper introduces an estimator of stock price volatility which eliminates, at least asymptotically , the biases that are caused by the discreteness of observed stock pr ices. Assuming that the observed stock prices are continuously monito red, an estimator is constructed using the notion of how quickly the price changes rather than how much the price changes. It is shown tha t this estimator has desirable asymptotic properties, including consi stency and normality. Also, through a simulation study, the authors s how that it outperforms natural estimators for low and middle priced stocks. Further, the simulation study demonstrates that the proposed estimator is robust to certain misspecifications in measuring the tim e between price changes. Copyright 1988 by American Finance Association.
Seasonality in Stock Price Mean Reversion: Evidence from the U.S. and the U.K.

The evidence of slowly mean-reverting components in stock prices has been controversial. The hypothesis of stock price mean-reversion is tested using a regression model that yields the highest asymptotic power among a class of regression tests. Although the evidence that the equally weighted index of stocks exhibits mean-reversion is significant in the period 1926-88, this phenomenon is entirely concentrated in January. In the postwar period, both the equally weighted and the value-weighted indices exhibit seasonal mean-reversion in January. A similar phenomenon is also observed for the equally weighted index of stocks traded on the London Stock Exchange. Copyright 1991 by American Finance Association.
Redundant information encoding in primary motor cortex during motor tasks

Information encoded in neuron ensembles has previously been hypothesized to be highly redundant, despite the apparent inefficiency of a redundant encoding system. The recent availability of intracortical, multi-electrode recordings has enabled the possibility of exploring how neuronal ensembles encode information as a whole. Applying concepts from information theory, we examined the redundancy of the target information encoded in both contralateral and ipsilateral hemispheres of the primary motor cortex (M1) in macaque monkeys performing a center-out reaching task. During movement, we reliably found neurons in contralateral M1 to contain higher target information and to be more redundant than ipsilateral M1 neurons, which is consistent with the conventional understanding that motor control is mainly governed by contralateral M1. Secondly, neuron ensembles in both hemispheres showed largely redundant information encoding. These results suggest that redundancy in information encoding is highly prevalent in the motor cortex and may contribute to proficient motor control.
Economic Accounting and Family Farming in India

It is widely realized in India, as elsewhere, that planning for economic development and the creation of a socialistic society require the collection of information and statistical data on a large scale. Since 70 percent of the people in India live by agriculture and the country as a whole barely feeds itself, planned development clearly calls for data on the present state of the agricultural economy, both as a benchmark for measuring the needs and the successes of the Plans and as keys to which measures of development are likely to be most fruitful.
Solitary fibrous tumors in abdomen and pelvis: imaging characteristics and radiologic-pathologic correlation.

AIM To describe the imaging features of solitary fibrous tumors (SFTs) in the abdomen and pelvis, and the clinical and pathologic correlations. METHODS Fifteen patients with pathologically confirmed SFTs in the abdomen and pelvis were retrospectively studied with imaging techniques by two radiologists in consensus. Patients underwent unenhanced and contrast-enhanced imaging, as follows: 3 with computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination, 8 with CT examination only, and 4 with MRI examination only. Image characteristics such as size, shape, margin, attenuation or intensity, and pattern of enhancement were analyzed and correlated with the microscopic findings identified from surgical specimens. In addition, patient demographics, presentation, and outcomes were recorded. RESULTS Of the 15 patients evaluated, local symptoms related to the mass were found in 11 cases at admission. The size of the mass ranged from 3.4 to 25.1 cm (mean, 11.5 cm). Nine cases were round or oval, 6 were lobulated, and 10 displaced adjacent organs. Unenhanced CT revealed a heterogeneous isodense mass in 7 cases, homogeneous isodense mass in 3 cases, and punctuated calcification in one case. On MRI, most of the lesions (6/7) were heterogeneous isointense and heterogeneous hyperintense on T1-weighted images and T2-weighted images, respectively. All tumors showed moderate to marked enhancement. Heterogeneous enhancement was revealed in 11 lesions, and 7 of these had cysts, necrosis, or hemorrhage. Early nonuniform enhancement with a radial area that proved to be a fibrous component was observed in 4 lesions, which showed progressive enhancement in the venous and delayed phase. No statistical difference in the imaging findings was observed between the histologically benign and malignant lesions. Three patients had local recurrence or metastasis at follow-up. CONCLUSION Abdominal and pelvic SFTs commonly appeared as large, solid, well-defined, hypervascular masses with variable degrees of necrosis or cystic change that often displaced adjacent structures.
Adjusting for Beta Bias: An Assessment of Alternate Techniques: A Note

This paper tests the effectiveness of techniques proposed by: Scholes-Williams; Dimson; Fowler, Rorke, and Jog; and Cohen, Hawawini, Maier, Schwartz, and Whitcomb to control for bias in beta estimates from thin trading and price adjustment delays. Each technique produces beta estimates that reduce the amount of this bias, but the amount of reduction in the best case is only 29%. AT LEAST TWO SOURCES of beta bias have been well-documented-trading delays and price adjustment delays. Fisher [7] was the first to recognize the potential problems caused by nontrading which, subsequently, has been shown to bias beta estimates. For a given differencing interval length and market index, Scholes and Williams [24], Dimson [5], and Fowler, Rorke and Jog [9, 10] (FRJ) present analytical and empirical evidence that betas of securities that trade less (more) frequently than the index used in their estimation are downward (upward) biased. Cohen, Hawawini, Maier, Schwartz, and Whitcomb [CHMSW] [3] were among the first to recognize the importance of price adjustment delays as a source of beta bias. McInish and Wood [19] provide evidence of the potential for price adjustment delays and thin trading delays to affect the results of studies in which segmentation of returns into periods is important. CHMSW describe a number of different sources of price adjustment delays including transactions costs and actions of market makers. These authors show that for a given differencing interval length, a security with more (less) trading delay than the market will have its beta biased downward (upward). Thus, price adjustment delays and thin trading result in similar bias in beta estimates. Clearly, these two sources of bias are related since prices (as opposed to quotations) cannot adjust to reflect a changed market equilibrium without a transaction occurring. Techniques for estimating betas so as to control for thin trading bias have been proposed by Scholes and Williams [24], Dimson [5], and FRJ [11]. 1 Each
Visual exploration of form and position with identical stimuli: Functional anatomy with PET

Visual form and position perception in primates is thought to engage two different sets of cortical visual areas. However, the original concept of two functionally different and anatomically segregated pathways has been challenged by recent investigations. Using identical stimuli in the centre of the visual field with no external cues, we examined whether discrimination of form aspects and position aspects would indeed activate occipito‐temporal and occipito‐parietal areas, respectively. We measured and localised regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) changes in the brain with positron emission tomography (PET) and 15O‐butanol while the subjects performed four visual tasks: position discrimination (PD), form discrimination (FD), joint form and position discrimination (FPD), and a control task. Discrimination of form contrasted with discrimination of position resulted in rCBF increases in the lateral occipital and fusiform gyri. Discrimination of position contrasted with discrimination of form yielded rCBF increases in the left frontal eye field and middle frontal gyrus. No extra activations were seen when the joint form and position discrimination task was contrasted with either the individual form and position discrimination tasks. When the individual form and position discrimination tasks were contrasted with the control task, form discrimination resulted in activations in both occipito‐temporal and occipito‐parietal visual cortical regions, as well as in the right middle‐frontal gyrus. Position discrimination resulted in activation in occipito‐parietal visual cortical regions, the left frontal eye field and the left middle frontal gyrus. These findings are consistent with the view that the processing of visual position information activates occipito‐parietal visual regions. On the other hand, the processing of 2D visual form information, in addition to the activation of occipito‐temporal neuronal populations, also involves the parietal cortex. Form and position discrimination activated different nonsymmetrical prefrontal fields. Although the visual stimuli were identical, the network of activated cortical fields depended on whether the task was a form discrimination task or a position discrimination task, indicating a strong task dependence of cortical networks underlying form and position discrimination in the human brain. In contrast to former studies, however, these task‐dependent macronetworks are overlapping in the posterior parietal cortex, but differentially engage the occipito‐temporal and the prefrontal cortex. Hum. Brain Mapping 11:104–116, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Economic Accountability in the Context of Local Governance in the Philippines: A Structural Equation Modelling Approach

This study posits that by virtue of the enabling role of local governments, the economic development of their locality must be at the core of their public accountability, which is referred to here as “economic accountability”. Grounded on this idea of accountability, along with enabling theory and institutional theory, the study presents empirical evidence supportive of the argument that the enabling role of local governments, as manifested in a capacity to establish or adhere to formal institutional arrangements, has a direct impact on the entrepreneurial strategic posture and performance of local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which are key players in local economic development.The results of the structural equation modelling support the view that institutional arrangements as manifestations of the enabling role of city governments are positively associated with an entrepreneurial strategic posture of local firms, which consequently improves the firms’ overall economic performance. Therefore, SME development in particular, and local economic development in general, should be part of the economic accountability of local governments in the Philippine context of local governance.
All binarized convolutional neural network and its implementation on an FPGA

A pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) is a feed-forward computation perspective, which is widely used in the embedded systems requiring highly power-and-area efficiency. This paper realizes a binarized CNN which treats only binarized values (+1/-1) for the weights and the activation value. In this case, the multiplier is replaced by an XNOR circuit instead of a dedicated DSP block. Binarization for both weights and activation are more suitable for hardware implementation. However, the first convolutional layer still calculates in integer precision, since the input value is 8 bit RGB pixel, and not binarized. In this paper, we decompose the input value into maps of which each pixel is in 1-bit precision. The proposed method enables a binarized CNN to use bitwise operation in all layers, and shares a binarized convolutional circuit among all convolutional layers. We call this all binarized CNN. We compared our proposal with conventional ones. Since all binarized CNN do not require a dedicated DSP block, our proposal is smaller and 1.2 times faster than the typical CNNs, and almost maintains baseline classification accuracy. In addition, pipelined all binarized CNN achieved 1840 FPS, consumed 0.3 watts and its accuracy was 82.8%.
Chordin affects pronephros development in Xenopus embryos by anteriorizing presomitic mesoderm

Spemann's organizer emits signals that pattern the mesodermal germ layer during Xenopus embryogenesis. In a previous study, we demonstrated that FGFR1 activity within the organizer is required for the production of both the somitic muscle‐ and pronephros‐patterning signals by the organizer and the expression of chordin, an organizer‐specific secreted protein (Mitchell and Sheets [ 2001 ] Dev. Biol. 237:295–305). Studies from others in both chicken and Xenopus embryos provide compelling evidence that pronephros forms by means of secondary induction signals emitted from anterior somites (Seufert et al. [ 1999 ] Dev. Biol. 215:233–242; Mauch et al. [ 2000 ] Dev. Biol. 220:62–75). Here we provide several lines of evidence in support of the hypothesis that chordin influences pronephros development by directing the formation of anterior somites. Chordin mRNA was absent in ultraviolet (UV) ‐irradiated embryos lacking pronepheros (average DAI<2) but was always found in UV‐irradiated embryos that retain pronepheros (average DAI>2). Furthermore, ectopic expression of chordin in embryos and in tissue explants leads to the formation of anterior somites and pronephros. In these experiments, pronephros was only observed in association with muscle. Chordin diverted somatic muscle cells to more anterior positions within the somite file in chordin‐induced secondary trunks and induced the expression of the anterior myogenic gene myf5. Finally, depletion of chordin mRNA with DEED antisense oligonucleotides substantially reduced somitic muscle and pronephric tubule and duct formation in whole embryos. These data and previous studies on ectoderm and endoderm (Sasai et al. [ 1995 ] Nature 377:757) support the idea that chordin functions as an anteriorizing signal in patterning the germ layers during vertebrate embryogenesis. Our data support the hypothesis that chordin directs the formation of anterior somites that in turn are necessary for pronephros development. Developmental Dynamics 236:251–261, 2007. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Effects of Market Concentration and Horizontal Mergers on Hospital Costs and Prices

Antitrust advocates believe that horizontal consolidation in hospital markets can reduce competition and increase prices while merger advocates believe it can benefit consumers by reducing service duplication. This study analyzed the market conditions, operating characteristics, and costs and prices of approximately 3500 short-term general hospitals (including 112 within-market-area mergers) from 1986 to 1994 to investigate the effects of market concentration, hospital mergers, and managed care penetration. The results show: a shift away from non-price competition toward price competition in health care markets; that this shift was fueled by increased market penetration by price-sensitive buyers; that horizontal hospital mergers produced average cost savings of approximately 5%, which were generally passed on to consumers as lower prices; that cost savings were generally greater for mergers of similar-size hospitals, with a higher degree of duplicative services, and with lower pre-merger occupancy rates; and some evidence that post-merger price reductions were smaller in less-competitive markets.
Factors Affecting Small Colorado Producers’ Local Food Sales

Increased globalization of food trade has dramatically increased “food miles,” the distance food travels. The impacts of food miles on the environment, biodiversity, food security, and farmers' livelihoods are garnering increasing attention, but market forces affecting a lessening of food miles are little studied. This project examined previous literature; direct, local fresh produce operations; and producer insights to develop recommendations for increasing locally produced food. Producer size, product perishability, proximity to a population center, consumer perceptions, and producer philosophy influenced where Colorado growers sell. Growers suggested increased quality standards, marketing, and consumer education to increase the demand for local foods.
Earnings Surprises and the Cost of Equity Capital

Controlling for other determinants of the cost of capital, we find that firms with repeated large earnings surprises experience a higher cost of equity capital. This finding holds regardless of the sign of the earnings surprises, but firms that consistently report negative surprises have relatively higher cost of equity capital. Although firms that frequently surprise the market experience a decrease in analyst following relative to no surprise firms, this reduction in monitoring cannot account for the higher cost of equity capital. Overall, these findings document that repeated earnings surprises are costly, and provide evidence that managers have incentives to avoid missing earnings targets.