Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lost Opportunities: Work During High School, Establishment Closures and the Impact on Career Prospects

Relying on Swedish linked employer-employee data over a 30-year period, I study the importance of work during high school for graduates’ school-to-work transition and labor market outcomes. I show that employer links established through work during school provide students with an important job-search channel, accounting for 30 percent of direct transitions into regular employment. I use the fact that some graduates are deprived of this channel due to establishment closures just prior to graduation and labor market entry. I compare classmates from the same vocational high school tracks to identify the effects of the closures and show that the closure of a previous in-school establishment leads to an immediate and sizable negative effect on employment after graduation. The lost employer connections have also persistent, but diminishing negative effects on employment and earnings for up to 10 years. Parts of the negative effect are driven by the loss of employers links that offer job opportunities in industries related to graduates’ specialization in vocational school. I find evidence supporting that students who lose such relevant links shift towards jobs in less-relevant industries.
Gram-Negative Prophylactic Antibiotic Coverage Fusion Procedures: Associated Factors and the Role of Gram-Negative Surgical Site Infections After 989 Spinal

Background: To identify, analyze, and report the patient- and procedure-related factors associated with surgical site infection (SSI) after spinal fusion (SF) surgery. Methods: We included any SSI-SF from January 2013 to September 2015. A total of 989 spine surgeries that required instrumentation were performed. Results: Twenty-four out of 989 (2.43%) patients presented with SSI. More than half of the SSI cases (54%) got infected with either exclusively gram-negative bacteria or a combination of gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria; 9.1% of the surgeries involved the sacral spine (90 out of 989 patients). SSI in long constructs (more than 3 levels) was performed in 66.7% compared with 33.3% with short constructs; 87.5 % of the reported SSI (21 patients) were done through a posterior approach. Of patients who had SSI, 87.5% received prophylactic antibiotics, 92% were operated on during the daytime shift, 50% required blood transfusion, and 79% required surgical debridement. Four patients out of 24 patients died (17%) due to unrelated SSI complications. Conclusions: The overall incidence of gram-negative infections after long SFs remains low in our study population. Despite this low overall incidence, our results demonstrate a relative higher incidence of gram-negative SSIs in surgeries involving more than 3 spinal levels and for all those involving the sacral spine. We propose that there may be a potential benefit of gram-negative prophylactic antibiotic coverage in patients falling in either 1 of these categories. Further multivariate analysis and/or randomized studies may be necessary to confirm our results.
Unraveling the change of land-use regimes with satellite and ground surveys in the steppe belt of Russia from 1990 to 2018

One of the recent phenomena in land-change history in the steppe belt of Russia after 1990 is the formation of unclaimed or partially claimed agricultural lands, their periodic and fragmented use, suggesting the change of land-use regimes compared to intensive cropping in the Soviet period (pre 1991). Therefore, there is a strong need for the systematic field and remotely-sensed monitoring of shifts of land-use regimes, because they may impact various socio-ecological processes, such as the spread of wildfires, degradation and recovery of vegetation on spared agricultural lands. Here we present an elaboration on monitoring with satellite observations and field surveys of land-cover dynamic in the steppe belt of Orenburg Province and with more detailed focus on the districts (rayons) of Orenburg Province, which were once a part of Virgin Lands Campaign (1954-1963), when croplands expanded at the expense of agro-environmental frontiers. Our remote-sensing observations and ground surveys revealed widespread abandonment from 1990 to 2018. The calculation of Shannon’s Diversity Index confirmed the change in the typology of land-use regimes in Orenburg Province-transition from stable cultivation back to 1990 to new land regimes, such as stable cultivated areas with minor abandonment (typology #1)-e.g., Asekeevskij district; complete cropland contraction without recultivation (typology#2)-e.g., Akbulakskij district; strong fluctuation of cultivated and abandoned croplands from year to year (typology #3)-e.g., Pervomajskij district. Former Virgin Lands Campain areas were more exposed to typology #3. Shannon’s diversity index was useful to evaluate the changing land regimes and areas prone to socio-economic and environmental shocks. We hypothesize a new stage of land regimes may provide opportunities for biodiversity conservation, but also threats such as the spread of wildfires, particularly under the projection of an increase of aridity.
YMCA-1: A New Remote Star Cluster of the Milky Way?* * This work is based on INAF-VST guaranteed observing time under ESO program: 0104.D-0427(A).

We report the possible discovery of a new stellar system (YMCA-1), identified during a search for small scale overdensities in the photometric data of the YMCA survey. The object’s projected position lies on the periphery of the Large Magellanic Cloud about 13° apart from its center. The most likely interpretation of its color–magnitude diagram, as well as of its integrated properties, is that YMCA-1 may be an old and remote star cluster of the Milky Way at a distance of 100 kpc from the Galactic center. If this scenario could be confirmed, then the cluster would be significantly fainter and more compact than most of the known star clusters residing in the extreme outskirts of the Galactic halo, but quite similar to Laevens 3. However, much deeper photometry is needed to firmly establish the actual nature of the cluster, and the distance to the system.
Spatial variation of fine particulate matter levels in Nairobi before and during the COVID-19 curfew: implications for environmental justice

The temporary decrease of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations in many parts of the world due to the COVID-19 lockdown spurred discussions on urban air pollution and health. However there has been little focus on sub-Saharan Africa, as few African cities have air quality monitors and if they do, these data are often not publicly available. Spatial differentials of changes in PM2.5 concentrations as a result of COVID also remain largely unstudied. To address this gap, we use a serendipitous mobile air quality monitoring deployment of eight Sensirion SPS 30 sensors on motorbikes in the city of Nairobi starting on 16 March 2020, before a COVID-19 curfew was imposed on 25 March and continuing until 5 May 2020. We developed a random-forest model to estimate PM2.5 surfaces for the entire city of Nairobi before and during the COVID-19 curfew. The highest PM2.5 concentrations during both periods were observed in the poor neighborhoods of Kariobangi, Mathare, Umoja, and Dandora, located to the east of the city center. Changes in PM2.5 were heterogeneous over space. PM2.5 concentrations increased during the curfew in rapidly urbanizing, the lower-middle-class neighborhoods of Kahawa, Kasarani, and Ruaraka, likely because residents switched from LPG to biomass fuels due to loss of income. Our results indicate that COVID-19 and policies to address it may have exacerbated existing air pollution inequalities in the city of Nairobi. The quantitative results are preliminary, due to sampling limitations and measurement uncertainties, as the available data came exclusively from low-cost sensors. This research serves to highlight that spatial data that is essential for understanding structural inequalities reflected in uneven air pollution burdens and differential impacts of events like the COVID pandemic. With the help of carefully deployed low-cost sensors with improved spatial sampling and at least one reference-quality monitor for calibration, we can collect data that is critical for developing targeted interventions that address environmental injustice in the African context.
Using a Question Answering System to Enhance Knowledge and Improve the Exchange of Information among Physicians

Due to limited time, physicians often find it challenging to find the exact answers to their questions among search engine results; however, question and answer (Q&A) systems can facilitate more rapidly identify accurate solutions. This study aims to develop and evaluate a Q&A system for physicians at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Four clinical and informatics experts and the two health information managers agreed on 19 features and themes throughout two focus group meetings. Subsequently, a system was developed on a MySQL database using the PHP web development language and then uploaded to the web. Finally, the system was opened up to 40 users and, over three months, evaluated using a community evaluation questionnaire and the six-dimension Users’ Experience Questionnaire. The focus group results in determining the features of the Q&A system consisted of 19 requirements. The average attractiveness, perspicuity, efficiency, dependability, stimulation, and novelty were equal to 1.76, 1.625, 1.9, 1.425, 1.475, and 1.375, respectively. The Q&A system improved the tasks such as share of knowledge, transfer of information, social partnership, and cooperation among users. The physicians were able to obtain the information they required through contact with their co-practitioners over the system.
LONG-TERM CARE AND RETIREMENT INCOME

We examine the implications of the positive correlation of mortality and disability for the benefits of combining an immediate income annuity with long-term care disability coverage at retirement ages. Specifically, we show that combining the two products could reduce the cost of both coverages and make them available to more persons by reducing adverse selection in the income annuity and minimizing the need for medical underwriting for disability coverage. We find that minimal underwriting, excluding only those who would be eligible for disability benefits at purchase, would increase the potential market to 98 percent of 65-year-olds, compared with only 77 percent under current long-term care insurance underwriting practice. After the 2 percent representing the worst risks for high disability payments is excluded, simulated premiums for the combined product are lower by 3 to 5 percent than total simulated premiums for stand-alone income annuities and underwritten long-term care disability insurance purchased separately. We estimate premiums for all persons at age 65 and age 75 and premiums by gender at age 65. We also investigate the value of such a combined benefit to various subgroups of prospective purchasers and the implications of possible errors and moral hazard in the reporting of disability status and making claims. Christopher M. Murtaugh is associate director at the Center for Home Care Policy and Research, Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Brenda C. Spillman is senior research associate at The Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. Mark J. Warshawsky is director of research at TIAA-CREF Institute, New York. We thank Lee Granza of TIAA-CREF for her knowledgeable assistance with the institutional and administrative details of long-term care insurance and thank Karen Pinkston of Social and Scientific Systems for her expert programming. Our appreciation also goes to Peter Kemper, Josh Wiener, John Biggs, Olivia Mitchell, John McCormack, John Ameriks, Stuart Gillan, Penny Feldman, John Campbell, Steve Zeldes, two anonymous referees, and participants at the 1999 National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute and the 2000 American Risk and Insurance annual meeting for helpful conversations and comments. Any opinions expressed are our own and not necessarily those of the institutions with which we are affiliated. Chris Murtaugh and Brenda Spillman acknowledge the financial support of the TIAA-CREF Institute. Address all inquiries to Mark Warshawsky: mwarshawsky@tiaa-cref.org. 226 THE JOURNAL OF RISK AND INSURANCE
Spillovers Driving the New Economy ?

Some observers have raised the possibility that production spillovers and network effects associated with information and communications technology (ICT) are an important part of the “New Economy. ” Across U.S. manufacturing industries, however, ICT capital appears correlated with the acceleration of average labor productivity (ALP) growth as predicted by a standard production model, but not with total factor productivity (TFP) growth as these New Economy forces imply. Once one allows for productivity differences across industries, measured TFP growth is uncorrelated with all capital inputs, including ICT capital. This provides little evidence for a New Economy story of ICT-related spillovers or network effects driving TFP growth throughout U.S. manufacturing. ∗ Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Phone: (212)-720-6633; email: kevin.stiroh@ny.frb. org. I thank Bart van Ark, John Baldwin, Shane Greenstein, Bart Hobijn, Michael Orlando, an anonymous referee, and seminar participants at the Bank of Italy, the annual meetings of the Canadian Economic Association, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve System Committee Meeting on Macroeconomics, and the NBER Summer Institute for helpful comments. I also thank Steve Rosenthal for providing BLS data and Paul Edelstein and Adrienne Rumble for excellent research assistance. This paper represents the views of the author only and does not necessarily reflect those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System.
Effects of the Celiac Plexus Block versus Splanchnic Nerve Block for Upper Abdominal Tumors on Pain Relief and Quality of Life–randomized Comparative Study

Introduction: The diagnosis of early cancer and therapeutic options in advanced management has improved of patient’s expectancy of life. However, pain management for these patients is important concerns since pain is the most common symptom in 88% of these patients with an advanced stage of the disease. Aim: This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a neurolytic celiac plexus block versus a splanchnic nerve block for control of pain and the effects of these methods on the quality of life. Materials and Methods: This is a randomized comparative study from September 2018 to August 2019 in Tamil Nadu Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital, Omandurar Estate. A total of 30 patients, 15 in each group, were allocated randomly into celiac plexus block and splanchnic nerve block, and the results were analyzed statistically and discussed below. Results: Out of 30 patients, 22 were males, and eight were females. The mean age was 53.07 years in group splanchnic nerve block (SNB) and 56.6 years in group celiac plexus block (CPB), respectively. There was a significant decrease in visual analog scale score in group SNB versus group CPB on the 1st week and 2nd week of post-procedure and last week. Strong opioid consumption significantly decreased in group SNB versus group CPB at following times of post-procedure visit during days 7, 14, 28, 42, 56, 70, and 84. In the SNB group, nine patients had a backache, four had diarrhea, and two patients had hypotension. In the CPB group, three patients had a backache, seven had diarrhea, and eight patients had hypotension. Conclusion: The statistical data and results of this study illustrate that a SNB appears to be clinically comparable to the CPB. However, all statistically significant differences are of little clinical value.
Bringing social values to wildlife conservation decisions

inform different conservation strategies based on different types of values; and third, findings must be widely available and spatially explicit to allow cross- location comparisons and integration with other social and biological data. As such, our approach provides a base from which practical experience and added information could facilitate improvements in application of this policy tool. Here, we present the results of an analysis of an extensive sociocultural dataset used to map wildlife values across all 50 US states and corresponding counties, and briefly illustrate how this technique can inform conservation efforts via consideration of gray wolf ( Canis lupus ) reintroduction into the state of Colorado. Humans regularly exert a powerful influence on the survival and persistence of species, yet social- science information is used only sporadically in conservation decisions. Using data obtained from a survey of 46,894 US residents, we developed and applied a spatially explicit “sociocultural index” to inform decision making through an understanding of public values toward wildlife. The classification is defined by opposing values of mutualism and domination, which have been previously shown to be highly predictive of attitudes on a wide range of policy issues. We developed state and county maps that can be used to represent public interests in policy decisions and inform management actions that target human behavior, such as education. To illustrate, we present findings indicating a supportive social context for gray wolf ( Canis lupus ) reintroduction in Colorado, an issue voted on and passed through a November 2020 citizen ballot initiative. Although the results are particularly relevant for the US, the technique is broadly applicable and its expansion is encouraged to better account for human factors in conservation decisions globally.
Policy Uncertainty in Brexit U.K

We develop a model with heterogeneous firms and non-convex adjustment costs to study the effects economic policy uncertainty. In this model (i) uncertainty sparks from news about future policy reforms, which bears no direct effect on current fundamentals; (ii) uncertainty is about idiosyncratic and aggregate fundamentals in the long run; (iii) the timing of the reforms is uncertain. We use this framework to measure the effects of Brexit uncertainty. The long run idiosyncratic and aggregate effects of Soft and Hard Brexit are identified using expectation data from the Decision Maker Panel, a novel survey of U.K. businesses, where each CFO provides probability distributions over the long-run expected outcome of Brexit on firm-level sales, for different Brexit scenarios. The long-run effects of Brexit implied by U.K business expectations are found to be large, around 8.3% and 4.8% of GDP for Hard and Soft Brexit, respectively. The transitional dynamics under policy uncertainty reveal that the referendum has produced significant economic damage, with a drop in investment leading to a three-year cumulative loss of GDP of about 3%. Most of these effects have been driven by wait-and-see effects rather than by the anticipation of a worsening in future fundamentals. The effects of policy uncertainty are larger when the expected duration of uncertainty is short, as the expected inefficiency cost of inaction is smaller.
Multiple mixing for hyperbolic flows

Kotani and Sunada showed that hyperbolic maps exhibit exponential multiple mixing for Gibbs measures with respect to Hölder functions. In this note we explore the analogue of these results for hyperbolic flows. For geodesic flows on surfaces the multiple mixing is exponentially fast, and for hyperbolic flows with two closed orbits the ratios of whose periods is diophantine the multiple mixing is polynomially fast. As a preliminary to these results we consider the simpler case of the Manneville-Pomeau map of the interval. For flows that are multiply mixing with sufficient speed we can relate these results to third derivatives of the pressure.
EXPLAINING ETHNIC CONFLICTS WITH ETHNO-SYMBOLISM AND RATIONAL CHOICE THEORIES

This article will examine the reasons for genocide, ethnic cleansing and ethnic violence by using two points of view. The most popular approaches, rational choice theory (RCT) and the opposing perspective of ethno-symbolic theory, will be used to comprehend and analyze these crimes. RCT depicts security concerns and gives tangible reasons for genocide by framing the arguments from a realist perspective. In contrast, the ethno-symbolist approach insists on emotional motives behind genocide (Kaufman 2006: 46).
Impact of Salinity Stress During Germination Stage on Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L)

The salinity of irrigation water is a serious problem facing crop plants in the Mediterranean region, where plants are exposed to high temperatures and severe shortage of water in the dry season. So, this study was carried out in order to test the effects of five different salinity levels of sodium chloride (0.0, 50, 100, 150, 200 and 300 mM) on seed germination and early seedling growth of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). Fifty homogenous and cleaned seeds were germinated in Petri dishes inthree replicates. The salt stress decreased seed germination, the response of Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) to salt stress and water stress was evaluated at the germination stage. The severe reduction in germination percentage and particularly germination speed with prolonged lag period by moderate salinity level at 100 mM NaCl, suggests that Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is a salt-sensitive species during germination. Salinity reduced germination uniformity and germination synchrony and might delay start of germination but accelerates its termination with a consequent shortening of the time spread of germination. The recovery percentage was lo wer but speed of recovery was higher compared with the corresponding parameters of the control seeds. Recovery percentage was slightly improved with increasing in the concentration of NaCl.
Highly Bioactive Sol-Gel-Derived Borate Glasses

Attributable to their low chemical durability, borate-based glasses have been demonstrated to convert rapidly to hydroxy-carbonated apatite (HCA), the inorganic component of bone. However, the effect of sol-gel processing on the bioactivity of borate-based glasses has not been investigated. In this study, the gel and glass forming abilities of six different borate-based glass formulations with borate content ranging from 36 to 61 mol % and based on a previously studied four component melt-derived glass system [(46.1)B2O3–(26.9)CaO–(24.4)Na2O–(2.6)P2O5; mol %] were investigated. Compared to melt-quench, sol-gel processing fabricated nanoporous glass particles with at least 2 orders of magnitude greater values for specific surface areas and total pore volumes, which translated to dramatically higher aqueous interaction and ion release rates. Surprisingly, when immersed in simulated body fluid, HCA conversion was achieved in as little as 3 h for sol-gel derived borate based glasses, demonstrating a 25-fold i.