Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Disability at the margins: limits of the law

People with mental and cognitive disability are over-represented as both victims and offenders. In Australia, those with disability who are most likely to be incarcerated are persons from poor, highly disadvantaged families and neighbourhoods, as well as Indigenous Australians. This article first clarifies definitions of mental and cognitive impairment and complex needs. Evidence from studies using administrative data from criminal justice and human service agencies, work by the Aboriginal Disability Justice Campaign, reports by the Australian Human Rights Commission and New South Wales and Victorian Law Reform Commission references are analysed using a critical disability criminology approach. These reveal that protections for people with multiple and complex support needs are lacking; diversions and therapeutic approaches do not address the underlying causes of concerning behaviour engaged in by people with disability. It is argued that the law is a blunt and often punitive instrument by which to address these matters. There is evidence of the social and financial benefits that would flow to the individual, family and community from a wholesale change in the way the law, the criminal justice system, and human and social agencies work together to support people with mental and cognitive disability.
The supply of qualified nurses: a classical model of labour supply

The need to ensure adequate numbers of nurses is a key requirement of the current modernization of the UK NHS. However, it is unclear how effective wages are as an instrument to maintain or increase the nursing workforce, both in terms of absolute numbers and in the number of whole time equivalents. This study sets out to estimate a classical model of labour supply for British qualified married or cohabiting nurses and midwives, looking at both the participation decision and the hours of work supplied. Data are from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey over the years 1999–2000. Participation and hours of work are found to be inelastic with respect to own wage. These results suggest that increasing the wage would only have a moderate effect on labour supply. Interestingly, there is no significant statistical difference between having a child of nursery age (3–4) and having a child of school age (5–15) on participation and hours supplied. This suggests that recent policy initiatives to increase female labour force participation, through the provision of free nursery places, has been successful. Preliminary analysis of a split private and public sector sample suggests that hours supplied are completely inelastic with respect to wages in the public sector.
The reproductive context of cohabitation in comparative perspective: Contraceptive use in the United States, Spain, and France

Background: Discussions of cohabitation's place in family formation regimes frequently emphasize comparisons of reproductive behavior among married versus cohabiting couples. Many argue that the rise in cohabitation may have been fueled by availability of highly effective contraception, but that differences in contraceptive use between married and cohabiting couples should diminish as cohabitation becomes more established. Objective: We ask whether cohabiting women in the United States, Spain, and France are more likely than married women in these countries to use the most effective contraceptive methods and reversible methods. We also investigate whether the association between union status and contraceptive use has changed since the mid-1990s. Methods: Using data from the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth, the Spanish Fertility, Family and Values Survey, the French Gender and Generations Survey, and the Fertility and Family Surveys, we first descriptively compare contraceptive use patterns of cohabiting women to those of married women and then estimate regression models to adjust for group differences in key background factors. Results: Net of differences in age and parity, cohabitors were more likely than married women to use the most effective contraceptives in the mid-1990s' United States and France, yet notably not in Spain even when cohabitation was relatively uncommon. The case of Spain thus refutes the assumption that highly effective contraception is a necessary precursor for dramatic growth in cohabitation.
HfOx based vertical resistive random access memory for cost-effective 3D cross-point architecture without cell selector

Double-layer stacked HfOx vertical RRAM is demonstrated for 3D cross-point architecture using a cost-effective fabrication process. Electrode/oxide interface engineering using TiON layer results in non-linear I-V suitable for the selector-less array. The fabricated HfOx vertical RRAM shows excellent performances such as reset current (<;50μA), switching speed (~50ns), switching endurance (>108 cycles), half-selected read disturbance immunity (>109 cycles), retention (>105s @125oC). Moreover, a unique write/read scheme is proposed for 3D cross-point architecture. Analysis shows that for such 3D selector-less array, a large Ron (~100kΩ) from the non-linear I-V helps reduce the sneak path current, and a low interconnect resistance using metal planes as word lines reduces the undesirable voltage drop on the interconnect. As a conservative estimate, simulation shows that Mb-scale array without cell selector is achievable.
Ultimate ownership structure and stock liquidity: empirical evidence from Tunisia

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the ownership-liquidity relation in the context of the Tunisian Stock Exchange. Design/methodology/approach - In particular, the paper examines two empirical relationships: the relationship between ownership concentration and stock liquidity and the relationship between the separation of ownership from control and market liquidity. Findings - The empirical findings verify that the structure of ownership remains concentrated in the majority of the Tunisian firms. It is found that stock liquidity decreases significantly with concentrated ownership. Different devices are used to gain control and hence a significant separation of ownership from control affects liquidity in different ways. The results indicate that pyramidal structures have a significant negative impact on liquidity for all controlled firms. However, for family firms, non-voting shares increase liquidity for minority shareholders by reducing the probability of informed trading. Originality/value - Overall, this study reports that non-voting shares may be a liquidity enhancing device for family firms.
Immunochemical Analysis of Serologically Active Lipids of Mycoplasma pneumoniae

The major complement-fixing antigen of Mycoplasma pneumoniae is found in the lipid fraction of the organism. When the lipids of M. pneumoniae were fractionated by column chromatography on silicic acid, serological activity against both rabbit and human immune sera was found in two fractions, B and D. Fraction B, eluted with chloroform–methanol (9:1), was a minor component in terms of total complement-fixing activity and contained a complex of lipids which were detected in the region characteristic of phosphatidic acids by thin-layer chromatography on Silica Gel G. Fraction D, eluted with ethyl acetate–methanol (3.5:2), had approximately the same complement-fixing antigen titer as the original lipid extract and appeared as a “comet-shaped” spot between phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylcholine on Silica Gel G plates charred with sulfuric acid. However, by thin-layer chromatography on Silica Gel H impregnated with sodium tetraborate, it was demonstrated that fraction D did contain multiple components, all but one of which were carbohydrate-containing lipids (giving positive reactions when sprayed with orcinol-sulfuric acid reagent). Fraction D was found to contain glycerol and phosphate in equimolar ratios but did not contain nitrogen. Two sugars were detected which migrated on paper chromatograms with glucose and galactose.
Comparative Dynamics and Optimal Fiscal Policy in a Simple Model of Endogenous Growth

I analyze optimal fiscal policy choices in a continuous time endogenous growth model similar to Barro's. The government uses income taxes from representative 'rich' and 'poor' households to finance purchases of productive goods and to make transfer payments to poor households. Increases in government purchases can increase the growth rate, while increases in transfers reduce growth. I examine the socially optimal allocation of government resources to purchases and transfer payments and describe conditions under which both the rich and poor would benefit from cuts in entitlements if the savings are used to finance increased government purchases of productive goods. Copyright © 2006 The Author; Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Technological Change and Wages: An Inter-Industry Analysis

Previous research has found evidence that wages in industries characterized as high tech,' or subject to higher rates of technological change, are higher. In addition, there is evidence that skill-biased technological change is responsible for the dramatic increase in the earnings of more educated workers relative to less educated workers that took place during the 1980s. In this paper, we match a variety of industry level measures of technological change to a panel of young workers observed between 1979 and 1993 (NLSY) and examine the role played by unobserved heterogeneity in explaining the positive relationships between technological change and wages, and between technological change and the education premium. We find evidence that the wage premium associated with technological change is primarily due to the sorting of better workers into those industries. In addition, the education premium associated with technological change is found to be the result of an increase in demand for the innate ability or other observable characteristics of more educated workers.
Concurrent validity of GHQ-28 and PSE as measures of change

Synposis Substantial cross-sectional correlations have been reported between the GHQ and PSE (and CIS) total scores. Although necessary, this is not a sufficient condition for assuming good validity of the GHQ as a severity measure in longitudinal and health care evaluation studies. For this purpose the GHQ should also accurately reflect changes in severity over time. To examine their concurrent validity, GHQ and PSE scores were compared, in a three-wave longitudinal study, among 175 new psychiatric out-patients. Using a longitudinal structural equation model that takes measurement error into account, the strength of both the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationship between GHQ and PSE were estimated. The GHQ performed remarkably well; changes in severity as defined by PSE-ID and PSE total score were clearly reflected by changes in GHQ scores. The revised scoring method of the GHQ proposed by Goodchild and Duncan-Jones did not yield superior results.
A comparison of conventional guidewire alignment jigs with imageless computer navigation in hip resurfacing arthroplasty.

BACKGROUND Correct positioning of the initial femoral guidewire is vital in order to prepare the femoral head properly for hip resurfacing. The purpose of the present investigation was to determine the accuracy and precision of the placement of the initial femoral guidewire with use of conventional alignment jigs and to compare the results with those of imageless computer navigation. METHODS Five commercially available jigs (two lateral pin jigs, two neck centering jigs, and one head planing jig) were obtained. Four surgeons used each jig and navigation three times to insert a guidewire in 10 degrees of relative valgus and neutral version into individual synthetic femora. A single surgeon then used each jig three times to align the initial guidewire in 10 degrees of relative valgus and neutral version in each of ten human cadaver femora. Radiographs of the synthetic and human femora were made to assess and compare guidewire inclination and version between conventional instrumentation and navigation. RESULTS Navigation provided ranges of error in the coronal guidewire alignment of up to eight times less than the conventional jigs, but both methods provided similar ranges of error for version. In both arms of the study, there were significant differences in coronal alignment accuracy between the two neck centering jigs. Next to navigation, one lateral pin jig provided the most accurate coronal placement of the initial guidewire whereas one neck centering jig provided the most precise coronal placement of the guidewire. Navigation was similar to conventional jigs in terms of the accuracy and precision of guidewire version. CONCLUSIONS In hip resurfacing arthroplasty, the choice of a femoral alignment device may influence the accuracy and precision of guidewire insertion, ultimately impacting femoral component placement. Imageless computer navigation can facilitate accurate and precise coronal alignment of the initial femoral guidewire, superior to that of conventional instrumentation. CLINICAL RELEVANCE The results of this study may aid surgeons in the selection of alignment instruments for placement of the initial femoral guidewire during hip resurfacing.
Non-reflecting boundary conditions for waveguides

New non-reflecting boundary conditions are introduced for the solution of the Helmholtz equation in a waveguide. These boundary conditions are perfectly transparent for all propagating modes. They do not require the determination of these propagating modes but only their propagation constants. A quasi-local form of these boundary conditions is well suited as terminating boundary condition beyond finite element meshes. Related convergence properties to the exact solution and optimal error estimates are established.
THE DEGREE OF ALPHA ASYMMETRY AND ITS RELATION TO HANDEDNESS IN NEUROPSYCHIATRIC REFERRALS

While alpha rhythm asymmetry among normals is thoroughly documented, the significance of this finding in patients is not well known. The occurrence of alpha amplitude asymmetry in 82 clinical referrals of neuropsychiatric patients was studied in this research. Two separate means of quantifying the alpha asymmetry were used: The first by visual inspection; and the second by measurement in a standard manner. A handedness questionnaire was administered and indicated that 77 of the sample were right‐and five were left‐handed patients. By measurement, the mean overall differences in the alpha amplitude between the hemisphere was small (4 per cent) and non‐significant. Seventeen patients showed a differnce of 15 per cent or greater, and in two the difference reached 33 per cent. It was concluded that alpha asymmetry must be interpreted with care because it was found that there was an association between left‐temporal abnormalities and ipsilateral alpha enhancement, and the greater degrees of asymmetry were found in normal EEGs.
Covariance based linear precoding in the case of identical longterm channel state information

We extend the covariance based linear precoding theory to the spatial division multiple access (SDMA) downlink processing in the case that all the streams belonging to the same user have identical channel covariance matrices, which happens when the antennas of the user are located in close proximity. In this case, the precoders designed for those streams based on covariance channel state information (CSI) will be identical, therefore, they can not separate the user successfully. To overcome this, we modify the covariance matrices by keeping the eigenvectors unchanged and choosing one eigenvalue per stream if the number of streams equals to the rank of the covariance matrix. Otherwise, the eigenvalues will be divided into different groups with the rule making the sums of each group as similar as possible. Then, the precoders are designed based on the modified covariance matrices with the constraint of total transmit power. The proposed method is tested and simulation results show that it works well and can improve the bit error ratio (BER) of the system significantly.
Punctuated Equilibrium and the Information Disadvantage of Authoritarianism: Evidence from the People's Republic of China

According to the punctuated equilibrium thesis, government attention allocation alternates between long periods of stasis and dramatic spurts of disequilibrium because democratic institutions enable minority groups to obstruct change. This article presents a critical discrepancy in contemporary China, where punctuated instability is significantly more intense despite a lack of democratic institutions to empower minority obstructionism. Our empirical analysis further reveals that punctuated intensity goes even higher for Chinese regions facing fewer signs of social discontent. We attribute the intensification of punctuated dynamics to an information disadvantage arising from the lack of diverse, independent sources of information under authoritarianism. Our finding contributes to punctuated equilibrium theory by underlining the function of opposition groups not only as obstructionists but also as challengers to policy priorities. By marginalizing these challengers, authoritarian institutions confine attention to known problems, leading to serious delays in the discovery of and adjustment to emerging issues.
Modeling of Binary Collision between Multisize Viscoelastic Spheres

An accurate new contact force model is proposed for describing the grain collision process. The linear and nonlinear contact force models and normal coefficient of restitution in different impact velocities has been studied. A new contact force model for describing the normal collision between two viscoelastic spherical particles has been suggested and the ability of this new model in predicting the correct behavior of normal contact has been confirmed. The constitutive equations of this model have been solved numerically and the result shows a better conformity with experimental result reported by Bridge et al.(1) than the previous models, such as the model presented by Brilliantov et al.(2). By using the suitable finite elements model, the stress and deformation of particles during the collision has been obtained and the result of the finite element model shows a good conformity with our new suggested contact force model in the case of elastic and viscoelastic contact. The behavior of normal coefficient of restitution in multisize spherical particles in different impact velocities and the effect of the size on it has been experimentally studied. In addition to our more suitable contact force model, we achieved some nice conclusions from our experimental data about the loss of energy during the multisize collision and effect of size difference on this loss.
Mutation Reduction Strategies Considered Harmful

Mutation analysis is a well known yet unfortunately costly method for measuring test suite quality. Researchers have proposed numerous mutation reduction strategies in order to reduce the high cost of mutation analysis, while preserving the representativeness of the original set of mutants. As mutation reduction is an area of active research, it is important to understand the limits of possible improvements. We theoretically and empirically investigate the limits of improvement in effectiveness from using mutation reduction strategies compared to random sampling. Using real-world open source programs as subjects, we find an absolute limit in improvement of effectiveness over random sampling—<inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$13.078\%$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Given our findings with respect to absolute limits, one may ask: How effective are the extant mutation reduction strategies? We evaluate the effectiveness of multiple mutation reduction strategies in comparison to random sampling. We find that none of the mutation reduction strategies evaluated—many forms of operator selection, and stratified sampling (on operators or program elements)—produced an effectiveness advantage larger than <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> $5\%$</tex-math></inline-formula> in comparison with random sampling. Given the poor performance of mutation selection strategies—they may have a negligible advantage at best, and often perform worse than random sampling—we caution practicing testers against applying mutation reduction strategies without adequate justification.
Semi-supervised recursively partitioned mixture models for identifying cancer subtypes

MOTIVATION Patients with identical cancer diagnoses often progress differently. The disparity we see in disease progression and treatment response can be attributed to the idea that two histologically similar cancers may be completely different diseases on the molecular level. Methods for identifying cancer subtypes associated with patient survival have the capacity to be powerful instruments for understanding the biochemical processes that underlie disease progression as well as providing an initial step toward more personalized therapy for cancer patients. We propose a method called semi-supervised recursively partitioned mixture models (SS-RPMM) that utilizes array-based genetic and patient-level clinical data for finding cancer subtypes that are associated with patient survival. RESULTS In the proposed SS-RPMM, cancer subtypes are identified using a selected subset of genes that are associated with survival time. Since survival information is used in the gene selection step, this method is semi-supervised. Unlike other semi-supervised clustering classification methods, SS-RPMM does not require specification of the number of cancer subtypes, which is often unknown. In a simulation study, our proposed method compared favorably with other competing semi-supervised methods, including: semi-supervised clustering and supervised principal components analysis. Furthermore, an analysis of mesothelioma cancer data using SS-RPMM, revealed at least two distinct methylation profiles that are informative for survival. AVAILABILITY The analyses implemented in this article were carried out using R (http://www.r.project.org/). CONTACT devin_koestler@brown.edu; e_andres_houseman@brown.edu SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
Does cervical length measurement help to predict the success rate of labor induction using misoprostol at term in women with strictly unfavorable cervix

Objectives: To evaluate the clinical use of transvaginal ultrasonographic cervical length measurement for predicting successful labor induction at term in women with strictly unfavorable cervices. Materials and Methods: Seventy four women at term with maternal and fetal indications for labor induction were included in the study. All women had singleton pregnancies in vertex presentation and a Bishop score of ≤4 in the presence of closed cervices without evidence of uterine contractions. Fifty µcg sublingual misoprostol every four hours up to a maximum six doses was commenced. Cervical length was measured by transvaginal ultrasound, and receiver operator curve characteristics were analyzed for predictability of cesarean delivery and induction failure as judged on the basis of no delivery or no uterine contractions within 24 hours. Results: Fourteen cesarean deliveries (18.9%) and seven induction failures (9.4%) were diagnosed. Using the optimum cutoff value of 30 mm as a threshold of cervical length for the prediction of induction failure, a sensitivity of 85.7%, a specificity of 44.3%, a positive predictive value of 15% and a negative predictive value of 96.4% were obtained. Using the optimum cut-off value of 30 mm as a threshold of cervical length for the prediction of cesarean delivery, a sensitivity of 85.7%, a specificity of 43.3%, a positive predictive value of 26% and a negative predictive value of 92.9% were obtained. The cesarean section rate was 26.1% for the women who had a cervical length ≥30 mm, while it was 7.1% for the women with a cervical length ≤30 mm (p=0.04). Fetal birth weight was a better predictor of failed induction (Area Under the Curve [AUC]: 0.65) followed by cervical length (AUC: 0.63).