Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Poverty Lines Across the World

National poverty lines vary greatly across the world, from under $1 per person per day to over $40 (at 2005 purchasing power parity). What accounts for these huge differences, and can they be understood within a common global definition of poverty? For all except the poorest countries, the absolute, nutrition-based, poverty lines found in practice tend to behave more like relative lines, in that they are higher for richer countries. Prevailing methods of setting absolute lines allow ample scope for such relativity, even when nutritional norms are common across countries. Both macro data on poverty lines across the world and micro data on subjective perceptions of poverty are consistent with a weak form of relativity that combines absolute consumption needs with social-inclusion needs that are positive for the poorest but rise with a countrys mean consumption. The strong form of relativism favored by some developed countries -- whereby the line is set at a fixed proportion of the mean -- emerges as the limiting case for very rich countries.
A test of the answering mechanisms of the double-bounded contingent valuation method

The double-bounded contingent valuation method (DBCVM) has long been criticized as an inappropriate estimation method because of respondents’ inconsistent behavior during a course of DBCVM survey. Many experimental studies have reported that two subsequent answers are not made independently, but the second answer depends upon the first. There are many kinds of hypotheses, each of which contends a different pattern of dependence of the answers. In this study, it will be tested which hypothesis is more appropriate in explaining the dependence of the answers. For the test, the DBCVM under uncertainty is newly developed here in which some uncertainties associated with the CVM are recognized and the risk premium plays a criterion for respondents to answer.
Bank Competition, Asset Allocations and Risk of Failure: An Empirical Investigation

This study is an empirical investigation of theoretical predictions concerning the impact of bank competition on bank risk and asset allocations. Recent work (Boyd, De Nicolo and Jalal, 2009, BDNJ henceforth) predicts that as competition in banking increases, the loan-to-asset ratio will rise (under reasonable assumptions), but the probability of bank failure can either increase or decrease. However, the probability of bank failure will fall if and only if borrowers’ response to take on less risk as loan rates decline is sufficiently strong. We test these predictions using two samples with radically different attributes. With both, we find that banks’ probability of failure is negatively and significantly related to measures of competition. We also find that as competition intensifies, borrower risk decreases and the loan-to-asset ratio increases. These results are consistent with the predictions of the BDNJ model.
Market Reactions to Policy Deliberations on Fair Value Accounting and Impairment Rules During the Financial Crisis of 2008-2009

Fair value accounting (FVA) has been blamed for amplifying the financial crisis of 2008-2009. We investigate investor and creditor reactions to policymaker deliberations, recommendations and decisions about FVA and impairment rules in the banking industry. If FVA was a key contributor to the financial crisis as some industry pundits and academic research suggest, we first should observe positive stock market reactions to proposals that relax FVA rules and negative reactions when policymakers support FVA. Second, we investigate cross-sectional stock price reactions to bank-specific factors that potentially contributed to pro-cyclical contagion. Third, we examine whether banks that have fewer alternative sources of information about fair values experience relatively negative reactions to potential relaxation of FVA and impairment rules. Finally, we investigate credit market reactions to these policy deliberations, recommendations and decisions by examining changes in credit default swap (CDS) spreads for a subset of banks in our sample.Our first result suggests that investors acted as if the potential negative effects of then-existing FVA and impairment rules outweighed any benefits associated with having more timely and transparent mark-to-mark data for decision-making. Second, while our cross-sectional test results are mixed, our most robust result suggests that the magnitude of stock price reactions to the relaxation of FVA and impairment rules was positively related to the proportion of banks’ illiquid assets. Third, we provide mixed evidence that banks without analyst coverage (and thus presumably fewer alternative sources about fair values) were harmed by proposals and policies that relaxed FVA and impairment rules. Finally, our results on credit market reactions suggest that positive stock market reactions to the potential relaxation of FVA rules are not likely caused by wealth transfers from creditors to shareholders.
Value of Direct Immunofluorescence for Differential Diagnosis of Cicatricial Alopecia

Background: There are diverse causes of cicatricial alopecia characterized by lack of follicular ostia and irreversible loss of hair. While clinical differentiation between the causes may be difficult, particularly with regard to lichen planus (LP), lupus erythematosus (LE) and pseudopelade of Brocq (PB), it has been suggested that both histopathologic examination and direct immunofluorescence studies (DIF) are necessary for an accurate diagnosis. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic value of DIF studies in addition to histopathology in patients with cicatricial alopecia as a clinical feature. Methods: 136 scalp biopsy specimens received for histopathology and DIF during a 5-year period were reviewed. Results: Definitive diagnosis was achieved by careful evaluation of scalp biopsies. The most prevalent diagnoses in order of frequency were LP (26%), LE (21%) and folliculitis decalvans (20%). PB was diagnosed in 10%. In most cases, the diagnosis could be made on the basis of histopathology and independently of DIF. Characteristic DIF patterns showed high specificity, but low sensitivity for LP, and high specificity and sensitivity for LE. The DIF pattern in PB showed no difference to LP. Conclusions: Histopathology permits diagnosis in the majority of cicatricial alopecias. DIF is of value in histopathologically inconclusive cases, particularly when LE is in question.
A method for separation of phosphatidylcholine, triacylglycerol, non-esterified fatty acids and cholesterol esters from plasma by solid-phase extraction*

Efficient isolation of individual lipid classes is a critical step in the analysis of plasma and lipoprotein fatty acid compositions. Whilst good separations of total lipid extracts are possible by TLC, this method is time consuming and a major rate-limiting step when processing large numbers of specimens. A method for rapid separation of phosphatidylcholine (PC), non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA), cholesterol ester (CE) and triacylglycerol (TAG) from total plasma lipid extracts by solid-phase extraction (SPE) using aminopropyl silica columns has been developed and validated. Following initial separation of polar and neutral lipids, individual classes were isolated by application of solvents with increasing polarity. Recoveries for combined plasma extraction with chloroform–methanol and SPE were (%): PC 74·2 (SD 7·5), NEFA 73·6 (sd 8·3), CE 84·9 (sd 4·9), and TAG 86·8 (sd 4·9), which were significantly greater for TAG and NEFA than by TLC (P<0·001). Both GC–flame ionisation detector and GC-MS analysis of fatty acid methyl esters demonstrated that there was no cross-contamination between lipid classes. Measurements of repeatability of fatty acid composition for TAG, PC, CE and NEFA fractions showed similar CV for each fatty acid. The magnitude of the CV appeared to be related inversely to the fractional fatty acid concentration, and was greatest at concentrations of less than 1 g/100 g total fatty acids. There was no evidence of selective elution of individual fatty acid or CE species. In conclusion, this method represents an efficient, rapid alternative to TLC for isolation of these lipid classes from plasma.
Queries with Bounded Errors & Bounded Response Times on Very Large Data

Author(s): Agarwal, Sameer | Advisor(s): Stoica, Ion | Abstract: Modern data analytics applications typically process massive amounts of data on clusters of tens, hundreds, or thousands of machines to support near-real-time decisions. The quantity of data and limitations of disk and memory bandwidth often make it infeasible to deliver answers at human-interactive speeds. However, it has been widely observed that many applications can tolerate some degree of inaccuracy. This is especially true for exploratory queries on data, where users are satisfied with "close-enough" answers if they can be provided quickly to the end user. A popular technique for speeding up queries at the cost of accuracy is to execute each query on a sample of data, rather than the whole dataset. In this thesis, we present BlinkDB, a massively parallel, approximate query engine for running interactive SQL queries on large volumes of data. BlinkDB allows users to trade-off query accuracy for response time, enabling interactive queries over massive data by running queries on data samples and presenting results annotated with meaningful error bars. To achieve this, BlinkDB uses three key ideas: (1) an adaptive optimization framework that builds and maintains a set of multi-dimensional stratified samples from original data over time, (2) a dynamic sample selection strategy that selects an appropriately sized sample based on a query's accuracy or response time requirements, and (3) an error estimation and diagnostics module that produces approximate answers and reliable error bars. We evaluate BlinkDB extensively against well-known database benchmarks and a number of real-world analytic workloads showing that it is possible to implement an end-to-end query approximation pipeline that produces approximate answers with reliable error bars at interactive speeds.
Techniques for Realistic Visualization of Fluids: A Survey

Visualization of fluids has wide applications in science, engineering and entertainment. Various methodologies of visualizing fluids have evolved which emphasize on capturing different aspects of the fluids accurately. In this survey the existing methods for realistic visualization of fluids are reviewed. The approaches are classified based on the key concept they rely on for fluid modeling. This classification allows for easy selection of the method to be adopted for visualization given an application. It also enables identification of alternative techniques for fluid modeling.
The Role of Parent-Firm Characteristics in Affiliate Activities in South Korean Foreign Direct Investment

ABSTRACT We examine the role of parent-firm characteristics in affiliate activities, including local sales, exports to Korea, and exports to third countries. We find that parent-firm characteristics apparently affect the selling behaviors of affiliates. First, affiliate local sales increase with higher research and development (R&D) intensity and capital intensity but with lower parent wages. Affiliate exports to Korea decrease with higher capital intensity and lower wages, and affiliate exports to third countries rise with higher R&D intensity. We also analyze the extent to which affiliate activities are influenced by country and industry characteristics, and the results coincide with those of conventional motivations for foreign direct investment (FDI).
Physiological significance of a peripheral tissue circadian clock

Mammals have circadian clocks in peripheral tissues, but there is no direct evidence of their physiological importance. Unlike the suprachiasmatic nucleus clock that is set by light and drives rest–activity and fasting–feeding cycles, peripheral clocks are set by daily feeding, suggesting that at least some contribute metabolic regulation. The liver plays a well known role in glucose homeostasis, and we report here that mice with a liver-specific deletion of Bmal1, an essential clock component, exhibited hypoglycemia restricted to the fasting phase of the daily feeding cycle, exaggerated glucose clearance, and loss of rhythmic expression of hepatic glucose regulatory genes. We conclude that the liver clock is important for buffering circulating glucose in a time-of-day-dependent manner. Our findings suggest that the liver clock contributes to homeostasis by driving a daily rhythm of hepatic glucose export that counterbalances the daily cycle of glucose ingestion resulting from the fasting–feeding cycle.
Energy-Conserving Always-on Schemes for a Mobile Node with Multiple Interfaces in All-IP Network

In a heterogeneous overlay wireless network, a mobile node (MN) with multiple wireless interfaces can attach to various networks and obtains multiple IP addresses simultaneously. To allow correspondent nodes (CNs) to connect to an MN at anytime through any MN's IP address, an MN must keep its interfaces awake to receive incoming packets. Unfortunately, the previous studies indicate that power consumption of an MN with multiple interfaces poses a serious problem, even when interfaces are idle. This work presents two novel energy-conserving always-on schemes for an MN with multiple interfaces. These schemes only maintain one awake interface of an MN and turn off completely other interfaces of the MN to minimize its power consumption. By updating proper binding information on home agents (HAs), packets sent to the IP addresses associated with these turned-off interfaces can be received by the MN without packet loss.
Union Rents as a Source of Takeover Gains among Target Shareholders

This paper tests the hypothesis that the substantial gains enjoyed by shareholders in target firms during the corporate acquisition boom of the 1980s reflected, in part, shareholders' recouping of the value of “rents” (in the form of wage premiums, higher fringe benefits, and constraints on managerial authority) held by unionized labor. Analyzing data on the merger and acquisition experience of nearly 300 large publicly traded target firms during the period 1982–86, the author finds, consistent with that hypothesis, that shareholders' average returns from takeover activity were higher in unionized target firms (41%) than in nonunion target firms (35%). For unionized workers, these effects are equivalent to an annualized employee “loss” approaching 8% of annual earnings, or 50% of the wage premium conventionally associated with union coverage.
The effects of financial literacy on the borrowing behaviour of Turkish financial consumers

Our research attempts to measure the effects of financial literacy of Turkish financial consumers on the borrowing behaviour. A questionnaire is administered to a sample of 550 people in the city of Eskisehir. In-depth interviews are undertaken with 10 financial consumers to support the findings. Findings of the study indicate differences in the borrowing behaviour of consumers with different levels of financial literacy. Considering the relationship between financial literacy and borrowing behaviour, we suggest that attempts to increase financial literacy of financial consumers may have important implications in the prevention of excessive borrowing.
Linking the trends in material flows with poverty in the Philippines

This paper attempts to link information from national material flow accounts, which have been established for the Philippines only recently, and standard measures of poverty. Since the Philippines economy during the last two decades has undergone significant ups and downs, poverty of parts of the Philippines population is an eminent problem. At the same time, the Philippines is still to a great extent an agricultural economy where both growth in household income and availability of food are related to the efficiency of the agricultural activities. In order to arrive at an analysis of the potential for alleviating poverty, trends in material flows are considered as background information for economic arguments. This is assumed possible for two reasons: first of all, material flows establish a biophysical background for all economic activities and create direct links to other environmental resources such as land. Secondly, material flows are rather stable and slow to change. The finding of the paper, that growth impulse (e.g. rising labour productivity) mainly comes from agriculture does not support an optimistic view for future reduction of poverty since population growth in the Philippines currently overtakes domestic food production and the crops contributing to growth are limited by the availability of land of good quality.
Which structure do models represent? Representation and structure in economics: the methodology of econometric models of the consumption function

Camerer, C. , and Loewenstein, G. (2003), ‘Behavioral Economics: Past, Present and Future’, in Advances in Behavioral Economics, eds. C. Camerer, G. Loewenstein, and M. Rabin, Princeton, NJ: Russell Sage Foundation, Princeton University Press, pp. 3–52. Friedman, M. ([1949] 1953), ‘The Marshallian Demand Curve’, in Essays in Positive Economics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 47–99. Friedman, M. , and Savage, L. (1948), ‘The Utility Analysis of Choices Involving Risk’, Journal of Political Economy, 56, 279–304. ——— (1952), ‘The Expected Utility Hypothesis and the Measurability of Utility’, Journal of Political Economy, 60, 463–474. Friedman, M. and Schwartz, A. (1963a), A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——— (1963b), Money and Business Cycles. Review of Economics and Statistics 45 (1, part 2: supplement). Reprinted in M. Friedman (1969), The Optimum Quantity Theory of Money and Other Essays, Chicago: Aldine, pp. 189–236. Mäki, U. (1986), ‘Rhetoric at the Expense of Coherence: A Reinterpretation of Milton Friedman’s Methodology’, Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 4, 127–143. ——— (2000), ‘Kinds of Assumptions and Their Truth: Shaking an Untwisted F-twist’, Kyklos, 53, 303–322.
Diabetes Mellitus Induces Bone Marrow Microangiopathy

Objective—The impact of diabetes on the bone marrow (BM) microenvironment was not adequately explored. We investigated whether diabetes induces microvascular remodeling with negative consequence for BM homeostasis. Methods and Results—We found profound structural alterations in BM from mice with type 1 diabetes with depletion of the hematopoietic component and fatty degeneration. Blood flow (fluorescent microspheres) and microvascular density (immunohistochemistry) were remarkably reduced. Flow cytometry verified the depletion of MECA-32+ endothelial cells. Cultured endothelial cells from BM of diabetic mice showed higher levels of oxidative stress, increased activity of the senescence marker &bgr;-galactosidase, reduced migratory and network-formation capacities, and increased permeability and adhesiveness to BM mononuclear cells. Flow cytometry analysis of lineage− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ cell distribution along an in vivo Hoechst-33342 dye perfusion gradient documented that diabetes depletes lineage− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ cells predominantly in the low-perfused part of the marrow. Cell depletion was associated to increased oxidative stress, DNA damage, and activation of apoptosis. Boosting the antioxidative pentose phosphate pathway by benfotiamine supplementation prevented microangiopathy, hypoperfusion, and lineage− c-Kit+ Sca-1+ cell depletion. Conclusion—We provide novel evidence for the presence of microangiopathy impinging on the integrity of diabetic BM. These discoveries offer the framework for mechanistic solutions of BM dysfunction in diabetes.
Per-Stream MSE Based Linear Transceiver Design for MIMO Interference Channels With CSI Error

This paper studies the linear transceiver design for multi-stream multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) interference channels with imperfect channel state information (CSI). Two CSI error models are considered. The same coding and modulation scheme is assumed for all users and data streams. In the first model, where the CSI error is statistical, we minimize the average maximum per-stream mean square error (MSE). In the second model, where the CSI error is norm bounded, the worst-case maximum per-stream MSE is optimized. Since the problems are not jointly convex, the alternate optimization approach is adopted to obtain suboptimal transceivers. For the statistical CSI error, a low-complexity algorithm utilizing Lagrangian duality is proposed, which has a semi-closed form solution and can be implemented distributively. Compared with the classical algorithm using the second-order-cone programming, the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the computational complexity without sacrificing the performance. For the bounded CSI error, we present two approaches. One uses S-procedure to obtain an equivalent problem and the other one solves an approximated problem. Simulation results demonstrate the robustness of the proposed algorithms and their improved performance over the sum-MSE and the maximum per-user MSE based methods. The lower complexity of the Lagrangian duality based algorithm is also verified numerically.
A new parrot taxon from the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico—its position within genus Amazona based on morphology and molecular phylogeny

Parrots (Psittaciformes) are a diverse group of birds which need urgent protection. However, many taxa from this order have an unresolved status, which makes their conservation difficult. One species-rich parrot genus is Amazona, which is widely distributed in the New World. Here we describe a new Amazona form, which is endemic to the Yucatán Peninsula. This parrot is clearly separable from other Amazona species in eleven morphometric characters as well as call and behavior. The clear differences in these features imply that the parrot most likely represents a new species. In contrast to this, the phylogenetic tree based on mitochondrial markers shows that this parrot groups with strong support within A. albifrons from Central America, which would suggest that it is a subspecies of A. albifrons. However, taken together tree topology tests and morphometric analyses, we can conclude that the new parrot represents a recently evolving species, whose taxonomic status should be further confirmed. This lineage diverged from its closest relative about 120,000 years ago and was subjected to accelerated morphological and behavioral changes like some other representatives of the genus Amazona. Our phylogenies, which are so far the most comprehensive for Amazona taxa enabled us to consider the most feasible scenarios about parrot colonization of the Greater and Lesser Antilles and Central America from South America mainland. The molecular dating of these migrations and diversification rate were correlated with climatic and geological events in the last five million years, giving an interesting insight into Amazon parrot phylogeography and their evolution in general.
A Dynamic Model of Investment and Endogenous Growth

Models of endogenous growth assume that private investment in either physical or human capital yields positive externalities to production possibilities as a whole. But what is the structure of such externalities? We present a model of "learning by watching" which implies a nonlinear relationship between productivity growth and the investment rate. This results in multiple steady-state growth rates in a deterministic setting, and in a rich dynamic structure that generates both growth and cycles in a stochastic model (calibrated by reference to observable shocks to tax rates in the U.K.). Economies with identical structures can experience very different growth rates for long periods. The model exhibits pathdependence and history matters.