Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Impact of Bank Leverage Regulations on the South African economy

We employ a micro founded and stock and flow consistent model in the tradition of Backus et al. (1980) to study the impact on the South African economy of a regulatory change raising banks’ leverage ratios. The model provides for a richer representation of institutional balance sheets than existing models. In it the financial sector’s behaviour parallels that analysed by Borio and Zhu (2012) and Woodford (2010), focussing attention on the relationship between bank capital, risk taking behaviour of the financial sector, lending spreads and economic activity. The financial accelerator mechanism operates through the balance sheets of all institutions in the economy. In line with the economic literature, the results indicate that the introduction of a higher leverage ratio for banks is likely to generate negative economic impacts in the short-run that depend on the banks’ choice of adjustment strategy. A negative GDP effect is greatest if the financial sector reduces leverage though a reduction in the value of its assets (for example, recall of loans) rather than the issue of new equity. The regulatory shock leads to the financial sector changing its perceptions of risk, which reduces the size of the money multiplier and increases lending spreads. The results also highlight that the higher regulatory requirements affect the transmission mechanisms of monetary policy. Effective execution of monetary policy requires understanding of how the financial sector is likely to achieve new regulatory requirements and how its perceptions of risk are affected.
Physicochemical and stability profile of castor oil emulsions stabilized using natural and synthetic emulsifiers

Background: The quality and stability of castor oil emulsions may be influenced by the type and amount of its constituent emulsifiers. To our knowledge, the emulsifying potential of single, double, and triple-emulsifier systems comprising of Tween 20, acacia gum and methyl cellulose have never been compared. The aim of the work was to formulate castor oil emulsions stabilized using natural and/or synthetic emulsifying agents and evaluate their organoleptic, physicochemical, and stability profiles. Methods: Six types of emulsions were prepared using the spontaneous emulsification method, and characterised in terms of their physical properties; centrifugation analysis, and real-time stability profile at 25 °C and 40 °C for 90 days. Results: FT-IR analysis suggested that castor oil was compatible with all the studied emulsifiers. Tween 20-stabilised formulation (F2) and acacia gum/methyl cellulose-based samples (F5) exhibited unacceptable organoleptic attributes and/or physical properties. The physical properties of the remaining castor oil macroemulsions were satisfactory: pH (6.2 to 7.0); electrical conductivity (2253-4557 μS/cm); spreadability (0.7-2.1 cm); oil globule size (2.73-3.74 μm), and creaming index (9-18 %). The emulsions exhibited varying degree of instability over time and with elevated temperatures. The most promising emulsion was acacia gum/methyl cellulose/tween 20-stabilised sample F7: pH: 6.9, electrical conductivity: 4557 μS/cm, spreadability: 1.37 cm, oil globule size: 3.74 μm, creaming index: 9 %, and satisfactory stability profile at 25 °C and 40 °C. Conclusion: Sample F7 may serve as cream base for dermal and transdermal delivery of active pharmaceutical ingredients intended to treat various local skin problems and systemic diseases.
Unpacking the Links between Conflict and Child Welfare: Evidence from a Foreign Insurgency

Abstract Violent conflicts have enduring effects on child welfare, but little is understood about the mechanisms underlying these effects. Using data from Cameroon collected from a decade before to shortly after the eruption of the Boko Haram insurgency in the country, we study the immediate impacts of terrorist attacks on child welfare. We find that Boko Haram attacks lead to an immediate decrease in weight-for-height for children under five – an indicator of shortterm health and nutrition. Furthermore, we find a reduction in health care service utilization which can prolong and aggravate fever and diarrhea. We do not find effects on dietary diversity. Our results are not driven by changes in the sample of children alive, as child mortality is unaffected by the conflict. The results underscore the importance of health care service provision in conflict-affected areas urgently after the eruption of violence to prevent irreversible impacts from taking place.
What Creates Tourist Satisfaction in Prambanan Temple? (Isnanda

Tourism is an industry which has a potential significant role in economic growth around the world. Indonesia is a country which also prepares for a world class tourism industry. In this country, there is a UNESCO world heritage site named Prambanan temple located in Yogyakarta. The purpose of this research is to get the antecedents of tourist satisfaction in Prambanan temple. The level of tourist satisfaction is an important thing for tourist attraction marketers. It is claimed that a successful tourist attraction is a place which gives more satisfaction for its vistiors. There were 500 respondents filling the questionnaires of this study. The data were processed by SPSS and AMOS program. Descriptive statistics, validity, reliability, model fit, and regression analyses were run to prove the hypotheses. The result shows that perceived value, perceived quality, and destination image determine the level of tourist satisfaction. There are two kinds of implications from this research. Theoretically, this research strengthens the findings from the previous researches. Practically, this research gives some perspectives for tourist destination managers to create a better marketing strategy by giving more attention to perceived value, perceived quality, and destination image. This research also gives several suggestions for the next researches.
Community Bonding: Experience Report of Online Groups with Elderly People

In times of social isolation necessary as a sanitary measure to prevent wider spread of the coronavirus, the elderly were particularly affected. This article aims to detail an internship experience in creating and facilitating online reflexive groups open to elderly who were previously regulars in an institution linked to the city hall, that had its physical space transformed into a screening center for coronavirus patients. These groups happened via whatsapp, and each had about 8 meetings. Our original goal was to create and maintain strong bonds between peers, healthcare providers and the institution itself. The groups had mostly positive feedback and themes discussed varied, ranging from gender issues, ageism, technology, intergenerational bonding, the pandemic, grieving and loss.
Evaluation of Soil Interaction with Laterally Loaded Minipiles Using Optic Fiber

Driven minipile foundations are becoming common due to merits such as lightweight, easy installation and suitability for reinforcing in-situ structures with limited access. However, their interaction with the surrounding soil especially in battered conditions is not fully understood. To develop a better understanding of the interaction of minipiles with the surrounding soil, they were instrumented with Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. Open-ended steel minipiles of 1600 mm length were then driven at a site with cohesive soil vertically and at positive and negative 25 ̊ angle with the vertical and were tested for three in-situ lateral static loading cases. The near-continuous strain profile along the minipile shaft was reported using FBG. This helped in identifying the deformation pattern and the impact of load magnitude on this profile. The lateral load capacity was found to be maximum for positive 25 ̊, which decreased for 0 ̊, followed by negative 25 ̊ batter angle.
College Loans and Post-Schooling Human Capital Investment∗

We develop and estimate a dynamic decision model to study the potential distortion of college loan debt on workers’ post-schooling trajectories and how loan repayment policies may help reduce this inefficiency. In the model, heterogeneous workers, faced with borrowing limits and the burden of college loan repayment, make dynamic decisions on consumption, savings, labor supply, and costly human capital investment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we estimate two versions of the model, one with natural borrowing limits and the other with parameterized borrowing limits. We find that workers with larger college loans are more likely to have higher efficiency in producing human capital and lower disutility of work. Accounting for these unobservables, both models suggest that college loan debt leads young workers to underinvest in their human capital and that relative to the 10-year standard repayment plan, “Pay As You Earn” plans would lead to gains in both borrowers’ welfare and government revenues.
Insecticide Induced Resurgence of Brown Planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) on Rice

The research was undertaken in the entomological field of Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh during the Boro crop of 2015-16 and 2016-17. Fourteen generic of single-molecule insecticide along with control were used separately in this experiment. Among the 14 single-molecule insecticides, four generics were synthetic pyrethroid group insecticide. Causes of resurgence were determined in the form of a resurgence ratio. More resurgence of brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) on rice was induced by the application of all synthetic pyrethroids i.e., Cypermethrin, Deltamethrin, Fenvalerate, and Lambda cyhalothrin along with Acetamiprid, Chlorpyrifos, Phenthoate, and Thiamethoxam (resurgence ration 1.0 or above) compared to Pymetrozine 50WG (0.26), Dinotefuran 20SG (0.29), Isoprocarb/MIPC 75WP (0.43), Cartap 50SP (0.76) and Imidacloprid 20SL (0.91). Commonly used recommended insecticides i.e., Imidacloprid 20SL, Cartap 50SP, Isoprocarb/MIPC 75WP, Pymetrozine 50WG, and Thiamethoxam 25WG were used in 3 different doses (i.e., low, recommended, and high) and found that all recommended insecticides were induced higher resurgence ratio (≥1.0) except Pymetrozine 50WG when applied at sub-lethal dose. A positive correlation was found between resurgence ratio and yield loss.
Effects of educational subsidies and pay-as-you-go pensions on long-run growth under an endogenous growth model*

This study considers a three-period overlapping generations model with an endogenous growth setting, in which an agent borrows in the first period and repays the loan in the second period under a perfect credit market. Two educational subsidy schemes are considered: one is provided when an agent borrows and the other is provided when the agent repays his or her loan. This study compares the growth rates under each educational subsidy scheme for a balanced growth path and provides the sufficient conditions under which the growth rate in one scheme is larger than that in the other. A key to determining the size relationship of growth rates is whether the production of goods and services is physical-capital-intensive. Namely, when the production is sufficiently physical-capital-intensive, the interest rate in the credit market tends to be high, which discourages an agent from borrowing for his or her human capital investment. Hence, in this situation, an educational subsidy should be provided when an agent borrows to achieve a higher growth rate. If the production is not so physicalcapital-intensive, with some additional conditions, educational subsidies should be provided when an agent repays his or her loan to achieve a higher growth rate.
Physico-Chemical Analysis of Pyrolyzed Bio-Oil from Lophira alata

Lophira Alata (LA) bio-oil extract in a fixed bed reactor for 400 to 700 temperature range was study. Biomass material was characterized using analytical method to determine chemical composition and fuel properties. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur, MC, VM, FC and ash content in Lophira alata Sawdust are presented as 25.09, 2.98, 0.87, 70.11, 0.95, 7.27, 72.50, 18.48 and 1.75 wt. %, respectively while carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur content in the bio-oils were 65.67, 21.35, 0.43, 13.50 and 0.05 respectively. The flash point, pour point, pH, density, viscosity, API gravity, lower heating value (LHV) and Higher heating value (HHV) of bio-oil were found to be 86, -7, 4.90, 0.99 g/ml, 4.56 mm2/s, 19.18 wt%, 29.96 MJ/kg and 34.62 MJ/kg respectively which is higher than the HHV (21.20 Mj/kg) and LHV (18.08 Mj/ kg) of raw sample of Lophira alata Sawdust. GCMS analysis identifies the presence of trans-2-furanmethanol (4%), methyl1-cyclohexenyl ketone (7.0%), palmitic acid (5.6%), %), cis-10-pentadecen1-ol (11.0%), 9-octadecenal (12.0%), trans-2octadecadecen1-ol (13.0%), oleic acid (23.0%), and other compounds (23.8%). This study on bio-oil fuel properties has established Lophira alata wood has a potential fossil fuel substitute for production of bio-fuel for the generation of energy and industrial applications.
Influencing of compassion satisfaction and burnout on positive psychological capital of clinical dental hygienists

Objectives: This study seeks to identify the positive psychological capital, burnout, and compassion satisfaction levels of clinical dental hygienists to understand the factors affecting positive psychological capital and to establish measures to improve the positive psychological capital, and to utilize them. Methods: A self-reported questionnaire was filled out by 190 dental hygienists of the clinic from February 1 to April 30, 2020. Statistical analyses were conducted with the help of independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients, and stepwise multiple regression analysis. Results: Dental hygienists scored 3.47 points in positive psychological capital. The variables that influenced positive psychological capital were burnout and compassion satisfaction. The variables influencing positive psychological capital were monthly income_dummy2 (200–249/≥250), burnout, and compassion satisfaction. Conclusions: The positive psychological capital of clinical dental hygienists was found to be related to burnout and compassion satisfaction; additionally, compassion satisfaction had the greatest influence. Therefore, it will reduce burnout, improve compassion satisfaction, positive psychological capital, and contribute to efficient human resource management.
Structural Change, Land Use and Urban Expansion

We develop a multi-sector spatial equilibrium model with endogenous land use: land is used either for agriculture or housing. Urban land, densely populated due to commuting frictions, expands out of agricultural land. With rising productivity, the reallocation of workers away from agriculture frees up land for cities to expand, limiting the increase in land values despite higher income and increasing urban population. Due to the reallocation of land use, the area of cities expands at a fast rate and urban density persistently declines, as in the data over a long period. As structural change slows down, cities sprawl less and land values start increasing at a faster rate, as in the last decades. Quantitative predictions of the joint evolution of density and land values across time and space are confronted with historical data assembled for France over 180 years.
Comparative evaluation on the effect of selected ergot-derived dopamine on some female reproductive hormones in Wistar rats

Background: Hormonal imbalance can occur during some disease conditions, while in some other cases, an increase or decrease in the levels of the female hormones in the body might be associated with adverse effects from drugs and may also pose the risk of infertility and Ovarian cancers when these drugs are abused. Although the dopamine agonists have been helpful in ameliorating some disease conditions, it could also cause an adverse effect on the reproductive hormones and other organs of the body. Objective: This study comparatively evaluated the effect of Bromocriptine and Cabergoline on some female reproductive hormones. Methodology: This study was carried out using twenty-five rats grouped into five groups of five rats in each. Group one was the control group, Group 2 and 3 were low and high dose of Bromocriptine, while Group 4 and 5 were low and high dose Cabergoline. The drugs were administered twenty-four hourly and lasted for 21 days. Blood samples were collected for hormonal assay. Results: The results for the bioassay of FSH, LH, PROG, PRO and Estrogen revealed that both low and high dose of Bromocriptine and Cabergoline administered to the Wistar rats caused an increase in the concentration of FSH, LH, Progesterone, Prolactin and Estrogen. The level of Prolactin and Estrogen increased significantly at 0.05 level. However, a decrease was observed in prolactin and estrogen level when administered High dose bromocriptine and Low dose cabergoline respectively. Conclusion: This assessment therefore suggests that both Cabergoline and Bromocriptine had no adverse effects on the female reproductive hormones, however, Cabergoline may pose greater effectiveness than bromocriptine, hence adherence to prescription is necessary for effectiveness.
Discriminatory subsidies for energy-efficient technologies and the role of social preferences

Discriminatory subsidies, that is, subsidies for which only a subset of the population is eligible, are widespread although research on social preferences suggests that they may trigger unintended effects on non-eligible households. Employing a discrete choice experiment with 3071 owneroccupiers from France and Romania, we study how discriminatory subsidies affect households’ adoption of smart thermostats. Participants are randomly assigned to either a control condition (uniform subsidy) or to one of four treatments that vary by type of discrimination: (1) positive discrimination (participants are eligible for the subsidy but some other households are not) versus negative discrimination (participants are not eligible for the subsidy but some other households are) and (2) subsidy eligibility criteria (based on geographical location versus based on household characteristics). To analyze the moderating effect of social preferences on participants' response to the discriminatory subsidy, we elicit envy via an incentivized game in the sample from France. Our results from estimating mixed logit models suggest that receiving a subsidy increases participants' propensity to adopt a smart thermostat, regardless of whether other households are also eligible for the subsidy. Negatively discriminated households, however, are less likely to adopt
Non-Uniform Mini Batch Sampling for Relaxed Curriculum-based Learning

Curriculum-based training of deep neural networks showed that sampling minibatches from a distribution other than plain uniform on the data sorted by sample difficulty improves both the learning speed and the final classifier accuracy. Previous works propose different approaches to order the data by difficulty, as well as to define a proper pacing function that is used to restrict the training process to relevant parts of data in each epoch. In this work we explore a family of normal pacing functions, which, instead of explicitly limiting the epochs to a part of data and drawing mini-batches uniformly from that part, defines a sampling probability over the full dataset according to a discrete Gaussian-like distribution, and draws mini-batches from it. However, we show that despite this, the networks trained with this approach perform comparably well, while reducing number of curriculum hyper-parameters to tune in the learning process, and allows the model to occasionally see out-of-curriculum examples, essentially guiding the focus of the model in each epoch, instead of restricting it. This approach introduces a previously irrelevant challenge: differently from classical training epoch definition, where the network is trained on each sample exactly once at every epoch, in our setup some of the training examples might be shown to the network much less than others, or even not be shown at all.
An Integrated Architecture for Online Adaptation to Novelty in Open Worlds using Probabilistic Programming and Novelty-Aware Planning

Abstract AI systems today are often brittle to changes open world environments that were not previously anticipated by their designers. This brittleness can be a source of both reduced performance and (at times, catastrophic) failure. In this research, we seek to address this challenge with a general-purpose reasoning architecture that automatically adapts to open world environments that present novelty to the agent. The approach combines and extends probabilistic programming inference and planning under uncertainty to (1) recognize novelty when it occurs, (2) incrementally characterize the novelty as observations of the novelty accrue, and (3) continually adapt its task-based reasoning to the evolving understanding of the novelty in order to maximize task performance. Extending Bayesian and statistical inference, the system is designed to recognize and characterize novelty rapidly (e.g., with 10’s of observations) rather than requiring massive data sets for training, facilitating online adaptation. We demonstrate the research approach with an instantiation in two game domains in which unanticipated novelty can be injected at random times during a tournament. Empirical evaluation of the approach over a range of novelty types shows the expected decrease in performance when novelty is first injected, with a rapid (typically within a fraction of a single game), online recovery of performance during task execution as novelty is detected and characterized, and with stable, improved task performance in the later stages of the tournament after the nov-elty has been fully or (nearly-fully) characterized.
Cl in ic al s tu di es The Place of Instilational Immunotherapy in the Treatment of Non-muscle Invasive Bladder tumors

Introduction: Bladder tumors are the most common tumors of the urinary tract, accounting for about 5.5% of all cancers. In male it is on the 4th place, and in females it occupies the 7th place. TURBT is the gold standard for the initial treatment and diagnosis of bladder tumors. This intervention can be followed, in the case of non-muscle invasive tumors, by intravesical instillation, with a chemotherapeutic or with BCG. The aim of this work was to follow the evolution of patients with non-muscle invasive bladder tumors who have been treated with BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) immunotherapy. Matherial and methods: The study was a retrospective one, for a period of 5 years, between 2010 January 1 and 2014 December 31, including a number of 91 patients hospitalized in the Urology Clinic of Mureş County Clinical Hospital. Follow-up data at 24 months was present in 76 patients. Results: Of the 76 patients, 80.26% were male and 19.74% were female. The distribution of patients according to the environment of origin highlights the prevalence of the urban environment in the percentage of 72.36%, the rural area having a percentage of only 27.64%. The average age was 61.43 years. There was no statistically significant association between the gender of the patient and the rate of tumor recurrence. Of the 76 patients, 21 had tumor progression during the follow-up period. No patient was found to have progressed to invasive bladder tumor. Of the total number of 76 patients, at the end of the follow-up period, it was found that 8 discontinued treatment with BCG due to side effects such as: haematuria and tuberculous cystitis. In 3 patients, treatment with BCG failed and due to repeated recurrences required a total cystectomy. Conclusions: Instillational treatment with BCG immunotherapy remains the best option as an adjuvant in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder tumors to prevent recurrence and progression, in well-selected cases and with clear indication.