Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Agent-based Model of Tax Ceilings : Leviathan Extraction and Tax Payment Uncertainty

In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which imposed binding ceilings on the property taxes of California local governments. Since 1978, at least 31 states have passed similar laws. Most studies posit that voters seek to constrain rent-seeking Leviathan governments. Research has shown that voters may also support tax ceilings to reduce uncertainty over future tax payments. In this paper, we present a new agent-based model that incorporates unique administrative data on property taxes to provide, for the first time, a detailed explanation of how tax payment uncertainty determines the extraction choice set of a Leviathan government. Our agent-based model is unique because it allows voters to forecast the future effects of alternative policies by simulating rational expectations. For a given referendum, we use the model to generate a joint distribution for all random variables as a function of the proposed policy. Voters then choose whether to support the referendum by calculating their expected utility with this distribution as a prior. Our model incorporates administrative data on tax-payment uncertainty from two American cities with different property tax assessment regimes and thus different profiles of tax-payment uncertainty across their populations. Our model suggests that voters in a city with a highuncertainty assessment regimes would support a tax ceiling on their Leviathan government that is five times as restrictive as voters in a city with a low-uncertainty assessment regime. This provides new insight into how differences in assessment policy can explain variation in support for property tax ceilings. Since attitudes about uncertainty are critical to the model, we model both risk aversion and loss aversion. We find that under loss averse voters are more tolerant of Leviathan extraction for low to moderate levels of idiosyncratic risk; for high levels of idiosyncratic risk, loss averse and risk averse voters approximately converge in tolerance. JEL codes: D72, D81, C81, R51
Community mental health nurses' and compassion: an interpretative approach

WHAT IS KNOWN ON THE SUBJECT? : The concept of compassion is well documented in the healthcare literature but has received limited attention in mental health nursing. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS TO EXISTING KNOWLEDGE? : Mental health nurses struggle with defining compassion. The study, with its limitations, brings greater clarity to the meaning of compassion for community mental health nurses and NHS organizations. Mental health nurses need time to reflect on their provision of compassionate care. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE? : The study has shown that compassion is important for NHS healthcare management, frontline mental health nurses and policy-makers in UK, and there is potential for sharing practice and vision across NHS organisations. Mental health nurses could benefit from training to facilitate their understanding of compassionate practices. Emphasis should be placed on the importance of self-compassion and how this can be nurtured from the secure base of clinical supervision. ABSTRACT Introduction There is increasing emphasis in policy, research and practice in the UK and internationally on the importance of caring in health care. Compassion needs to be at the core of all healthcare professionals' practice. Recently, health care has received negative attention through media and government reports which cite a lack of compassion in care. Rationale The concept of compassion has received limited attention in community mental health nursing. Aim Based on data taken from semi-structured interviews with community mental health nurses, this paper aims to describe interpretations and perspectives of compassion to gain insight and development of its meaning. Method A naturalistic, interpretive approach was taken to the study. Semi-structured interviews with nine mental health nurses were analysed using Burnard's 14-step model of thematic analysis. Findings The research illuminates the complexity of compassion and how its practice impacts on emotional responses and relationships with self, patients, colleagues and the employing organization. Participants identified difficulties engaging with compassionate practice whilst recognizing it as a driving force underpinning provision of care. Implications for practice Mental health nurses need to be supported to work towards a greater understanding of compassionate care for clinical practice and the need for self-compassion.
Physiological Activity of Campylobacter jejuni Far below the Minimal Growth Temperature

ABSTRACT The behavior of Campylobacter jejuni at environmental temperatures was examined by determining the physiological activities of this human pathogen. The minimal growth temperatures were found to be 32 and 31°C for strains 104 and ATCC 33560, respectively. Both strains exhibited a sudden decrease in growth rate from the maximum to zero within a few degrees not only near the maximal growth temperature but also near the minimal growth temperature. This could be an indication that a temperature-dependent transition in the structure of a key enzyme(s) or regulatory compound(s) determines the minimal growth temperature. Oxygen consumption, catalase activity, ATP generation, and protein synthesis were observed at temperatures as low as 4°C, indicating that vital cellular processes were still functioning. PCR analysis showed that cold shock protein genes, which play a role in low-temperature adaptation in many bacteria, are not present inC. jejuni. The fact that chemotaxis and aerotaxis could be observed at all temperatures shows that the pathogen is able to move to favorable places at environmental temperatures, which may have significant implications for the survival of C. jejuni in the environment.
Police Stops, Pretext, and Racial Profiling: Explaining Warning and Ticket Stops Using Citizen Self-Reports

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between driver's social status characteristics, including race, and the likelihood of different types of traffic stops—warnings and tickets—by using self-report data from licensed drivers in North Carolina. Results suggest that Black drivers, driver age, and vehicle age are associated with warning stops by local police, while vehicle age and speeding are associated with state police warning stops. Furthermore, race and age along with traffic conviction history and typical speed are associated with local police ticket stops while age and a number of quasi-legal and legal factors predict state police ticket stops. Future profiling research should further examine the role of organization as an influence on the police use of traffic violations as pretext as well as the relationship between citizen race and police suspicion.
Optimization of reliability based on job scheduling

Duling is a main concept on distributed control systems. If we have a fair system to decision and job management, this will cause to reach to a reliable industrial system. Especially, in sensitive industries, fairness and reliability is very important. In previous works, several tries happened and many results obtained. In this paper a new approach presented in order to obtain far more reliable distributed industrial controlling systems. Indeed, based on the algorithm considered in methodology section, in this system when unpredicted crash occurs for each machine the whole of the other machines have the capability of offsetting the lack of the crashed machine. It is obvious that the system will be survival under this condition and to verify this approach the MATLAB software can be used.
Reducing P2PSIP session setup delays

It has been shown in previous work that session setup delays in a Peer-to-Peer Session Initiation Protocol (P2PSIP) based Voice over IP (VoIP) system can be unacceptably high. This is due to the need to route several messages across the P2P overlay and also due to the fact that P2PSIP needs to establish separate connections for SIP signaling and Real-Time Protocol (RTP) media between the communicating parties across Network Address Translators (NATs). In this paper, we will develop optimizations to reduce P2PSIP session setup delays. We will also analyze the performance of these optimizations. Using the proposed optimizations, it is possible to achieve delays that are up to three times lower than those of unoptimized P2PSIP.
Studies on the structural basis of the RNA polymerase activity of newcastle disease virus particles.

Summary Treatment of purified Newcastle disease virus (NDV) with Triton N101 to activate the virus particle RNA polymerase in the in vitro assay removed the glycoproteins and most of the phospholipid from the virus. The subvirus particles produced by the action of Triton N101 on virus had RNA polymerase activity, whereas purified NDV nucleocapsids did not. Apparently, either nucleocapsids did not contain the proteins essential for RNA polymerase activity, or the enzyme was denatured during the preparation of nucleocapsids. Incubation of several purified strains of NDV at 4 °C led to loss of polymerase activity which was regained on incubation at 37 °C. It is suggested that internal configurational changes in the virus particle were the most likely causes of these changes in enzyme activity on incubation at 4 °C and 37 °C.
Polarization Dynamics of Current-Modulated Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

We study the dynamics of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with direct current modulation in the framework of a model for index-guided VCSELs that takes into account two orthogonal linear polarizations. We analyze the effect of current modulation near the polarization switching (PS) of type I, from the high to the low frequency polarization, and near the PS of type II, from the low to the high frequency polarization. We find that the oscillations of the total power are as those of a single-mode laser, unaffected by the underlaying polarization coexistence or polarization competition. We also study the small-signal modulation response in the Fourier domain, for modulation dc values near the PS point. Close to type I PS the response of the total power as well as the response of the orthogonal polarizations has the same functional dependency on the modulation frequency, and can be fitted by the response function of a single-mode laser. Close to type II PS, polarization competition is a significant process at low modulation frequencies. The polarization-resolved modulation response displays features at low frequencies that are not present in the response of the total power, which is as that of a single-mode laser. The dynamics becomes increasingly complex as the modulation amplitude grows, and there is multistability of solutions.
Topic avoidance: Is this the way to a more satisfying relationship?

Romantically involved couples face many challenges in their relationships. One commonly held belief is that increased communication helps couples remain satisfied in their relationships and solves many of their problems. Because of this belief, this study investigated topic avoidance and relational satisfaction within romantic relationships. One hundred and twenty‐two participants (62 females) completed a questionnaire that asked what topics they avoided with their relational partners, what topics they perceived their partners avoided, and how satisfied they were in their relationships. Participants reported avoiding more topics than they perceived their relational partners avoided. In addition, a significant inverse relationship was found between the overall level of topic avoidance a relational partner perceived his or her partner engaging in and his or her own relational satisfaction. Further, a significant negative relationship was found between an individual's overall level of topic avoidance and his or her own relationship satisfaction.
A Two-Stage Method for the Study of Cultural Bias in the Diagnosis of Schizophrenia in African Americans

Reasons for diagnostic bias in psychiatric evaluations of African Americans fall into two basic categories: clinician bias, which is the lack of adherence to diagnostic criteria during psychiatric evaluations, and cultural bias, which is true ethnic/racial differences in symptom expression being overlooked or misinterpreted by diagnosticians. The ideal method of studying cultural biases in the psychiatric diagnosis of African Americans is a two-stage procedure with the first stage controlling for clinician bias and the second stage addressing cultural bias. This study evaluated a two-stage procedure that first considers clinician bias by a structured clinical interview followed by a best estimate diagnosis by a mental health clinician who is a cultural expert. The method was developed and evaluated for its reliability and validity in the Culturally Sensitive Diagnostic Interview Research Project. Data from 24 psychiatric inpatients were used to evaluate this diagnostic approach. Several hypotheses were tested, but not all were supported.
Temporal Information Extraction for Temporal Question Answering

This paper outlines work-in-progress regarding temporal information extraction, and highlights issues to be discussed by future research in temporal question answering. Based on Schilder & Habel (2001), we first present a semantic tagging system for temporal expressions and discuss how the temporal information conveyed by these expressions can be extracted. We then discuss extensions to the temporal tagger currently being implemented.
African American Students' Responses to Racial Discrimination: How Race-Based Rejection Sensitivity and Social Constraints are Related to Psychological Reactions

We examined the association between two individual differences (race-based rejection sensitivity and social constraints in talking about racism with family, friends, and/or intimate partners) and psychological reactions to an incident of racial discrimination. Participants were 551 African American undergraduates from either a predominantly white university (PWU) or a historically black university (HBU). Race-based rejection sensitivity (RS-Race) predicted higher negative affect and lower forgiveness for the perpetrator. Social constraints predicted higher negative affect and (marginally) lower forgiveness. There was also an interaction between social constraints and RS-Race: RS-Race was strongly negatively related to positive affect and forgiveness among participants with low social constraints but essentially unrelated among those with high social constraints. Thought intrusions (that might prolong the memory of the prejudicial event) also mediated the effects of RS-Race and social constraints on negati.
NOrec: streamlining STM by abolishing ownership records

Drawing inspiration from several previous projects, we present an ownership-record-free software transactional memory (STM) system that combines extremely low overhead with unusually clean semantics. While unlikely to scale to hundreds of active threads, this "NOrec" system offers many appealing features: very low fast-path latency--as low as any system we know of that admits concurrent updates; publication and privatization safety; livelock freedom; a small, constant amount of global metadata, and full compatibility with existing data structure layouts; no false conflicts due to hash collisions; compatibility with both managed and unmanaged languages, and both static and dynamic compilation; and easy acccommodation of closed nesting, inevitable (irrevocable) transactions, and starvation avoidance mechanisms. To the best of our knowledge, no extant STM system combines this set of features. While transactional memory for processors with hundreds of cores is likely to require hardware support, software implementations will be required for backward compatibility with current and near-future processors with 2--64 cores, as well as for fall-back in future machines when hardware resources are exhausted. Our experience suggests that NOrec may be an ideal candidate for such a software system. We also observe that it has considerable appeal for use within the operating system, and in systems that require both closed nesting and publication safety.
Prospective evaluation of acute and chronic renal function in children following matched related donor hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Ileri T, Ertem M, Ozcakar ZB, Ince Unal E, Biyikli Z, Uysal Z, Ekim M, Yalcinkaya F. Prospective evaluation of acute and chronic renal function in children following matched related donor hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Pediatr Transplantation 2010: 14: 138–144. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
A Novel Code Tracking Scheme using Correlation Outputs in Advanced Offset Region for GALILEO L1 Open Service

The single delta delay lock loop is the most widely used code tracking scheme for the GALILEO system that employs the binary offset carrier modulated spreading signal. When only a line-of-sight signal is received, the single delta delay lock loop is the optimal code tracking scheme. However, when the multipath signals are received, the correlation values are distorted, and thus, the tracking bias arises, which is defined as the difference between correct and estimated synchronization points. To tackle this problem, many tracking schemes have been proposed, e.g. narrow correlator DLL, high resolution correlator DLL, and so on. These schemes use the correlation values nearby the offset of the peak correlation values. However, the coherent auto-correlation function of the binary offset carrier modulated spreading signal has additionally two locally minimum correlation values whose offsets are plusmnTc /2 , respectively, where Tc is the chip duration. In multipath environments, the correlation values nearby the locally minimum correlation value are less distorted compared with those nearby the one whose offset is plusmnTc /2 . From this observation, we propose a novel tracking scheme, and then, its tracking accuracy is assessed using Monte-Carlo simulation.
Optimal closed-loop transmit antenna diversity with average and peak power constraints

In a closed-loop transmit antenna diversity system, a closed- form expression for the optimal transmitter weights that minimize the average bit error rate (BER) is derived with fixed average and peak transmit power constraints. It is shown that the peak power limitation degrades the average BER performance more significantly as the available average power and/or the number of transmit antennas increase.
Coronary structure and perfusion in health and disease

Blood flow is distributed through the heart muscle via a system of vessels forming the coronary circulation. The perfusion of the myocardium can be hampered by atherosclerosis creating localized obstructions in the epicardial vessels or by microvascular disease. In early stages of the disease, these impediments to blood flow are offset by dilation of the resistance vessels, which normally compensates for a decrease in perfusion pressure or increased metabolism. However, this dilatory reserve can become exhausted, which in general occurs first at the deeper layers of the heart wall where intramural vessels are subjected to compressive forces related to heart contraction. In the catheterization laboratory, guide wires of 0.33 mm diameter are available that are equipped with a pressure and flow velocity sensor at the tip, which can be positioned distal to the stenosis. These signals provide information about the impediment of the stenosis on coronary flow and allow for the evaluation of the status of the microcirculation. However, the interpretation of these signals is strongly model-dependent and therefore it is of paramount importance to develop realistic models reflecting the anatomy and unique physiology of the coronary circulation.
Resting Plasma Lipids and Cardiovascular Reactivity to Acute Psychological Stress

Abstract. Prior research suggests that hyperlipidemia is associated with elevated blood pressure responses to acute stress but whether lipid levels influence underlying cardiac and vascular determinants of blood pressure during stress is not known. Thus, we examined whether lipids were associated with stress-induced blood pressure responses and responses of stroke volume (SV), cardiac output (CO), and total peripheral resistance (TPR). In 19 healthy university students (15 men), blood was drawn to measure lipid levels (triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol [LDL-c], high-density lipoprotein cholesterol [HDL-c], total cholesterol) after a 10-min rest period. Participants then completed a 6-min mental arithmetic stressor and a 3-min cold pressor (separated by a 10-min recovery). This procedure was repeated twice, approximately 6 weeks apart. Lipids and hemodynamic values were averaged across the two sessions. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that a model including LDL-c, HDL-c, and t.
Efficient Sensor Placement Optimization for Securing Large Water Distribution Networks

The problem of deploying sensors in a large water distribution network is considered, in order to detect the malicious introduction of contaminants. It is shown that a large class of realistic objective functions—such as reduction of detection time and the population protected from consuming contaminated water—exhibits an important diminishing returns effect called submodularity. The submodularity of these objectives is exploited in order to design efficient placement algorithms with provable performance guarantees. The algorithms presented in this paper do not rely on mixed integer programming, and scale well to networks of arbitrary size. The problem instances considered in the approach presented in this paper are orders of magnitude (a factor of 72) larger than the largest problems solved in the literature. It is shown how the method presented here can be extended to multicriteria optimization, selecting placements robust to sensor failures and optimizing minimax criteria. Extensive empirical evidence .
On the Independent Origins of Complex Brains and Neurons

Analysis of the origin and evolution of neurons is crucial for revealing principles of organization of neural circuits with unexpected implications for genomic sciences, biomedical applications and regenerative medicine. This article presents an overview of some controversial ideas about the origin and evolution of neurons and nervous systems, focusing on the independent origin of complex brains and possible independent origins of neurons. First, earlier hypotheses related to the origin of neurons are summarized. Second, the diversity of nervous systems and convergent evolution of complex brains in relation to current views about animal phylogeny is discussed. Third, the lineages of molluscs and basal metazoans are used as illustrated examples of multiple origins of complex brains and neurons. Finally, a hypothesis about the independent origin of complex brains, centralized nervous systems and neurons is outlined. Injury-associated mechanisms leading to secretion of signal peptides (and related molecules) can be considered as evolutionary predecessors of inter-neuronal signaling and the major factors in the appearance of neurons in the first place.