Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Do Intermediaries Reverse the Impact of Monetary Policy in Low Interest Rate Environments?

I study the internal workings of intermediaries by exploiting geographical variation in market concentration. I show thatin stark contrast to the textbook view but consistent with my mechanismin low market rates more concentrated banks respond to market rate falls by reducing their deposit supply as well as their loan supply by more than those of less concentrated banks. As the market rate falls, household deposit and loan demand become less elastic to market rate changes as households allocate a larger fraction of their portfolio to deposits and deposit rates are only partially responsive to market rate changes. The reduction in elasticity increases the effective market power of banks. The downward pressure of the increased market power and the upward pressure of the traditional transmission channels, cause the non-monotonic response of bank to market rate changes and help explain the puzzling slow recovery of the economy as well as stable inflation after the global financial crisis. I also show that these results are consistent with banks active interest rate risk management. On the county-level, I show the impact of county exposure to bank market power on total mortgage lending, FinTech-based mortgage lending, and house prices becomes less in low market rates compared to high market rates. I argue these seemingly counterintuitive results are a direct consequence of bank’s non-monotone response to market rate changes. ∗I am deeply indebted to my advisor, James Peck for his guidance and support throughout my PhD studies. I am grateful to Kyle Dempsey, Sanjay Chugh, Farzad Saidi, Isil Erel, Amin Shams, Jack Liebersohn, Micheal Irwin, and Mohsen Mohaghegh as well as participants in workshops series at the Ohio State University for their insightful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are mine. †Ohio State University, setayesh.1@osu.edu
Inequality and Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean: New Data for an Old Question

The purpose of this paper is to revisit the relationship between inequality and crime, with a focus on the Latin America and Caribbean region. We find a significant, positive, and robust association between these variables. Moreover, inequality is the only variable showing this robust regularity. Education levels, economic activity, income per capita, and poverty show weaker and unstable relationships with crime. With due caution, the use of historical variables to instrument for inequality in crime regressions suggests that a causal interpretation of this relationship is plausible. In addition, the analysis of the distribution of crime victimization indicates that men suffer more crime than women, and that the male-to-female homicide ratio grows with inequality. By socio-economic strata, high-income groups suffer more victimization relative to poorer groups in LAC countries, but the poor suffer more homicides. JEL Classification Codes: D63; K42; O15; O54
Finite element modeling of Terfenol-D magneto-mechanical coupling: application to a direct micro-stepping rotary motor

Highly magnetostrictive materials such as Tb/sub 0.3/Dy/sub 0.7/Fe/sub 2/, commercially known as Terfenol-D, have been used to date in a variety of devices such as high power actuators and linear motors. The authors investigate a finite element model on a direct micro-stepping rotary motor. Such a motor would be a high torque micro-radian stepper, capable of precision movements and self-braking in the power off state. The thrust of this paper is to test the validity of the so-called "weak coupling" approach on a motor based on the proven inch worm technique. Comparison between numerical outputs from the model and test results on prototype hardware are presented.
Impact of Financial Development on Investment in Government Treasury Bills in Nigeria

This study was to examine the impact of financial sector development on investment in government treasury bills in Nigeria. Financial sector development was proxied by the ratio of money supply to GDP (M2/GDP; private sector credit to GDP (CPS/GDP) and lending interest rate while the dependent variable was measured by the outstanding treasury bills in money market in Nigeria. The study adopted the ex-post facto research design. The study applied multiple regression technique while the result of the regression coefficient was subjected to diagnostic tests. The result of the study revealed that the level of intermediation and lending interest rate had significant effect on investment in treasury bills in Nigeria as a unit increase in interest rate resulted in 52 percent increase in treasury bills. Also a unit increase in lending rate of banks led to 11 percent increase in investment in treasury bills in Nigeria. Based on these results, the study recommended among other things a systematic reduction in lending interest rates and increase in savings rate to stimulate high investment returns to savers and reduce the credit risk on lending.
Management of Omphalocele at the Regional Hospital Fousseyni Daou of Kayes, Mali

Introduction: the omphalocele is defined as a congenital malformation of the abdominal wall from the umbilical ring leading to non-integration of the viscera covered by an amniotic and avascular membrane. The cord still fits over the membrane. There are sometimes cavities between the viscera and the membrane that contain wharton jelly. The frequency is 1 case in 6000 births in France and 1 case in 5000 in Germany. We conducted this study in order to describe the epidemiological aspects and to evaluate the therapeutic results of omphaloceles in the regional hospital of Kayes. Materials and methods: We conducted a 15-month retrospective study from January 2020 to March 2021 in the pediatric surgery unit of the Kayes regional hospital, all newborns (0 to 6 days old) admitted to the ward with omphalocele were included. in the study. Other newborns with a malformation in addition to laparochisis were excluded from the study. Results: 11 patients were recorded in the study including 7 boys and 4 girls. The average age was 3.5 days and the average weight was 3 kg 350. According to the classification of Aitken 7 were type II and 4 cases type I. The technique of primary musculo-aponeurotic closure was used in all cases. Intraoperative hepatic hemorrhage occurred in 2 cases. We had recorded 2 deaths. No mother had a history of taking teratogenic drugs, 7 were multiparts. Ultrasound had found omphaloceles in 3 antenatal patients. Conclusion: Omphaloceles is a surgical emergency for which the management is multidisciplinary and requires an antenatal ultrasound.
Surface integrity and tool life when turning Inconel 718 using ultra-high pressure and flood coolant systems

The use of high-pressure cutting fluids has been shown to increase tool life or enable higher cutting speeds to be used when machining advanced aerospace materials such as Inconel 718. Cutting fluids act to provide cooling and to reduce friction between the tool and the chip. When supplied at high pressure, greater cooling and penetration of the fluid into the interface between the tool and the chip occur, when compared to conventional flood supply. Both these factors have the potential to alter the resulting surface integrity of the machined component. Following a brief review of the general machinability of Inconel 718, a series of experiments examining the effects of varying the cutting fluid supply pressure and direction of the jet are detailed when finish turning. Surprisingly, no increase in tool life was observed when using up to 450 bar pressure. When the high-pressure jet was directed at the flank face, reduced flank wear occurred but the level of notching was not affected, resulting in a similar life. Effective chip-breaking occurred at 150 bar; below this, continuous tubular-type chips were produced. Cutting fluid pressure and direction had relatively little influence on the level of surface integrity obtained. However, the use of ultra-high-pressure coolant provided a clear reduction in the level of tensile residual stresses developed in the near-surface layer. The lowest level of residual stress was induced with 450 bar coolant supplied to the flank face. Flood coolant induced a higher tensile stress in the near-surface layer and a larger compressive stress zone beneath this layer.
Thrombocytopenia and Anaemia Status of Pregnant Nigerian Women with Malaria Infection

Thrombocytopenia indicated by low platelet (PLT) counts and anaemia, low haemoglobin (Hb) levels, are the major commonest complications in severe malaria infection. Plasmodium falciparum malaria can cause thrombocytopenia, where there is an abnormally low number of platelets, and activation of the coagulation cascade. Nitric oxide is also a key mediator of platelet homeostasis. The results of this study revealed significantly (p < 0.05) low PLT counts and Hb levels (188.16±7.03 × 10 3 U/L and 8.88±0.15 g/dl) in the infected pregnant women when compared to the control subjects (241.17±9.80 × 10 3 U/L and 12.11±0.27 g/dl respectively). Degree of parasitaemia, gestational period, gravidae and age are inversely correlated with anaemia status and are statistically significant when compared to the control subjects. The platelet counts were found to decrease with severity of parasitaemia (163.17 ± 15.20 × 10 3 U/L). Thus, severe malaria and anaemia can lead to thrombocytopenia complication with fatal consequences both to the mother and foetus.
Functional Patterns of Lexical Bundles and Limitations in Academic Writing by Thai L2 English Learners

Lexical bundles, which serve as markers of fluent and appropriate language use, are referred to as "building blocks of discourse" because they occur frequently in written texts and help readers and writers process information more quickly. They also provide important linguistic functions. However, lexical bundles can vary across genres, domains and even sections of the same work, which can be challenging for novice and non-native writers. The purposes of this study are to explore how Thai L2 undergraduate students use lexical bundles in their academic papers written in English and to compare the use of lexical bundles with that in two written corpora: the British Academic Written English (BAWE) and Cambridge Academic English (CAE). A total of 53 research reports, or approximately 615,750 words, from Thai L2 students of English language studies and applied linguistics were systematically compiled and analysed. The most frequent four-word n-grams in the corpora were then identified and their types and functions categorised. Keyword analysis was used to compare the key n-grams identified in each academic corpus. The results show that native and non-native writers use lexical bundles in rather different ways. Some patterns that did not occur in the reference corpus were overused by Thai L2 English students. The data suggest that the inclusion of phraseology in L2 writing instruction has pedagogical implications. This study can be of great pedagogical value, especially for EAP instructors, as it reveals frequent patterns in the form of a pedagogically useful list of word combinations. By extension, the data presented can be used by non-native writers or academics, especially novice Thai writers, to improve their use of phraseological patterns in writing academic research reports or writing for publication.
AC-GC: Lossy Activation Compression with Guaranteed Convergence

Parallel hardware devices (e.g., graphics processor units) have limited high-bandwidth memory capacity. This negatively impacts the training of deep neural networks (DNNs) by increasing runtime and/or decreasing accuracy when reducing model and/or batch size to ﬁt this capacity. Lossy compression is a promising approach to tackling memory capacity constraints, but prior approaches rely on hyperparameter search to achieve a suitable trade-off between convergence and compression, negating runtime beneﬁts. In this paper we build upon recent developments on Stochastic Gradient Descent convergence to prove an upper bound on the expected loss increase when training with compressed activation storage. We then express activation compression error in terms of this bound, allowing the compression rate to adapt to training conditions automatically. The advantage of our approach, called AC-GC, over existing lossy compression frameworks is that, given a preset allowable increase in loss, signiﬁcant compression without signiﬁcant increase in error can be achieved with a single training run. When combined with error-bounded methods, AC-GC achieves 15.1 × compression with an average accuracy change of 0 . 1% on text and image datasets. AC-GC functions on any model composed of the layers analyzed and, by avoiding compression rate search, reduces overall training time by 4.6 × over SuccessiveHalving.
The Impact of Online Classes on Ocular Health in School Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to estimate the prevalence of Digital Eyestrain (DES), the common symptoms, and the prevalence of each symptom among students attending online classes of standards 6 to 12 during the COVID-19 pandemic and to determine the risk factors associated with it. Methods: This was a cross sectional study conducted in school children from standards 6 to 12 using an online self-administered Google form. Various aspects of digital device use like the type of device used, duration and purpose as well as the presence or absence of the symptoms of DES were included in the questionnaire. Results: A total of 262 students participated in the study, the mean age of which was 13.51±2.11 years. The most common digital device used was smartphone for online classes (89.31%), doing homework (89.69%) and for other purposes (60.31%). The mean duration of online classes per day increased from class 6 (114.82±39.31 minutes) to class 12 (213.33±74.52 minutes). The total screen time per day was significantly higher in class 11 (404.21±102.38 minutes) and 12 (469.58±142.60 minutes) compared to the lower grades. The overall prevalence of DES in this study was 69.08% (95% CI:63.25,74.37), which increased from 39.02% in class 6 to 100 % in classes 11 and 12. The prevalence was 94.78% if used for > 5 hours /day (p value <0.001). The most common symptom was eyestrain/ eye pain (45.8%) followed by headache (37.79%). The mean total screen time (358.99±112.47 minutes) was significantly higher in persons with DES (one way ANOVA test p<0.001) than those without DES (213.52±77.88 minutes). Conclusion: The prevalence of DES in school children during the COVID-19 era is very high with an alarmingly higher prevalence in the higher grades of classes which can have long term implications. Significant public health awareness and policies are required to save the eyes of the younger generation. Introduction It is well known that prolonged digital screen time is detrimental to eye health. This so called “Computer Vision Syndrome” (CVS) is becoming a major public health problem with the increasing use of computers in various professions (1) . The term “Digital Eye Strain” (DES), has now replaced the term CVS and it is a group of eye and vision related problems that result from prolonged use of digital devices (1) . It encompasses a constellation of ocular symptoms like headache, watering, dry eyes, eye ache, visual blurring, and burning sensation. It is also called by other names such as occupational asthenopia, digital http://jmscr.igmpublication. org/home/ ISSN (e)-2347-176x ISSN (p) 2455-0450 DOI: https://dx.doi. org/10.18535/jmscr/v9i10.23
Socioeconomic status and use of analgesic drugs before and after primary hip arthroplasty: a population-based cohort study of 103,209 patients during 1996–2018

Background and purpose Total hip arthroplasty (THA) is an effective and common procedure. However, persistent pain and analgesic requirement up to 2 years after THA surgery are common. We examined the trends in the utilization of analgesics before and after THA, overall, and in relation to socioeconomic status (SES) in a populationbased cohort. Patients and methods We used the Danish Hip Arthroplasty Register to identify 103,209 patients who underwent THA between 1996 and 2018. Data on prescriptions and SES markers was obtained from Danish medical databases. Prevalence rates of redeemed prescriptions for analgesics with 95% confidence intervals were calculated for 4 quarters before and 4 quarters after THA for the entire THA population, and by 3 SES markers (education, cohabiting status, and wealth). Results Overall, the prevalence of analgesic use prior to surgery was 42% at 9–12 months and 59% at 0–3 months before the THA. The prevalence of analgesics reached its highest at 64% 0–3 months after THA but declined to 27% at 9–12 months after THA. Low education, living alone, and having low wealth (low SES) were associated with higher prevalence of analgesics use both before and after THA. Interpretation 59% of patients used analgesics 0–3 months before surgery, which could indicate that THA might not be considered the last option for treatment and that surgery criteria might depend more on factors such as patient preferences or hip function. Moreover, health professionals should prioritize the use of a detailed plan when phasing out analgesics after THA to counteract unnecessary use, especially when treating patients with low SES.
MAU: A Motion-Aware Unit for Video Prediction and Beyond

Accurately predicting inter-frame motion information plays a key role in video prediction tasks. In this paper, we propose a Motion-Aware Unit (MAU) to capture reliable inter-frame motion information by broadening the temporal receptive field of the predictive units. The MAU consists of two modules, the attention module and the fusion module. The attention module aims to learn an attention map based on the correlations between the current spatial state and the historical spatial states. Based on the learned attention map, the historical temporal states are aggregated to an augmented motion information (AMI). In this way, the predictive unit can perceive more temporal dynamics from a wider receptive field. Then, the fusion module is utilized to further aggregate the augmented motion information (AMI) and current appearance information (current spatial state) to the final predicted frame. The computation load of MAU is relatively low, and the proposed unit can be easily applied to other predictive models. Moreover, an information recalling scheme is employed into the encoders and decoders to help preserve the visual details of the predictions. We evaluate the MAU on both video prediction and early action recognition tasks. Experimental results show that the MAU outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on both tasks.
Sageflow: Robust Federated Learning against Both Stragglers and Adversaries

While federated learning (FL) allows efﬁcient model training with local data at edge devices, among major issues still to be resolved are: slow devices known as stragglers and malicious attacks launched by adversaries. While the presence of both of these issues raises serious concerns in practical FL systems, no known schemes or combinations of schemes effectively address them at the same time. We propose Sageﬂow, staleness-aware grouping with entropy-based ﬁltering and loss-weighted averaging, to handle both stragglers and adversaries simultaneously. Model grouping and weighting according to staleness (arrival delay) provides robustness against stragglers, while entropy-based ﬁltering and loss-weighted averaging, working in a highly complementary fashion at each grouping stage, counter a wide range of adversary attacks. A theoretical bound is established to provide key insights into the convergence behavior of Sageﬂow. Extensive experimental results show that Sageﬂow outperforms various existing methods aiming to handle stragglers/adversaries.
Comparative Antiviral Activities of Diospyros Mespiliformis and Quisqualis indica Leaf Extracts on Newcastle Disease

A comparative analysis was done on the antiviral activities of aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic extracts of two Nigerian plants which were used traditionally to treat illnesses. The plant extracts of Diospyros mespiliformis Hochst, ex A.DC. , and Quisqualis indica A.L. , were screened for their activities against Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV). The assay was performed in ten day old embryonated chicken eggs by chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) and the allantoic sac inoculation. The viral replication in the tests and controls were estimated by haemagglitination assay of harvested allantoic fluid. The percentage inhibition of aqueous extracts concentrations of 400mg/ml, 200mg/ml and 100mg/ml of Diospyros mespiliformis (DM) on the virus were 91.0%, 86.0% and 85.0%, respectively, whereas, Quisquali indica (QI) yielded 50.0%, 50.0% and 43.0% respectively. Similarly, the percentage inhibition of the ethanolic extracts were DM: 95.0%, 90.5% and 89.0%; QI: 86.0%, 50.0% and 50.0% respectively. The percentage inhibition of methanolic extracts were DM: 100.0%, 92.8% and 90.5%; QI: 94.6%, 90.5% and 42.6% respectively. The extracts of Diospyros mespiliformis exhibited a better antiviral result in aqueous, ethanolic and methanolic conditions when compared to Quisqualis indica. The phytochemical analysis of crude extract of Diospyros mespiliformis and fractions exhibited the presence of Alkaloids, Tannins, Saponins, Triterpenes, Flavonoids and Cyanogenic glycosides. These results obtained in this study suggest that Diospyros mespiliformis could be a potential candidate in the management of Newcastle Disease Virus affecting the poultry industry. However, the active components responsible for the antiviral activity need to be evaluated.
The Pomological Traits of Autochthonous Pear Varieties in the Area of North Montenegro

Results of monitoring phenological characteristics of 12 autochthonous pear varieties were summarized during the years. The phenophase of flowering in the examined autochtonious pear cultivars begins at the earliest in the varieties: Buzdovanka, Kaličanka and Kačmorka (26.04). The variety Medunak begins to bloom at the latest (05.05). Morphological fruit characteristics were described, and chemical characteristics were pointed out (content of dry substance, content of sugar and total acid). In our study, the highest average fruit weight of the pear varieties was in the Turšijača variety (148.9 g) and the lowest in the Sijerak variety (34.8 g). The highest percentage of soluble dry matter was found in the pear variety Buzdovanka (16.47%) and the lowest in the pear variety Sijerak (10.06%). The lowest total soluble solids (TSS) were contained in the following pear varieties: Pećanka (8.51%), Turšijača (8.73%) and Sijerak (8.75%), while the highest total soluble solids (TSS) contained were following pear varieties: Buzdovanka (13.24%) and Jarac (11.72%). The highest content of total acids is found in the following pear varieties: Turšijača (0.35%) and Jarac (0.31%), and the lowest in the variety Kačmorka (0.12%). The paper also shows results of fruit thinning and its influence on fruit weight, fruits length and fruits diameter of the examined sorts. To cite: Šebek G (2020). The Pomological Traits of Autochthonous Pear Varieties in the Area of North Montenegro. Turkish Journal of Agricultural Engineering Research (TURKAGER), 1(1): 141-151.