Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications [with Comments and Discussion]

We examine households' financial fragility by looking at their capacity to come up with $2,000 in 30 days. Using data from the 2009 TNS Global Economic Crisis Study, we document that approximately one-quarter of U.S. respondents are certain they could not come up with that sum. If we include respondents who report being probably unable to do so, nearly half of respondents are financially fragile. Although financial fragility is more severe among low-income households, a sizable fraction of seemingly middle-class Americans are also at risk. Respondents with low educational attainment and no financial education, families with children, those who have suffered large wealth losses, and the unemployed are also more likely than others to report being unable to cope with a financial shock. Households' own savings are the resource used most often to deal with shocks, but resources of family and friends, formal and alternative credit, increased work hours, and sale of possessions are also used frequently, especially among some subgroups. These results indicate the need to look beyond precautionary savings to understand how families cope. We also find evidence suggestive of a "pecking order" of coping methods, with savings first in line. Comparing financial fragility and methods of coping among the United States and seven other industrialized countries, we find differences in coping ability but also general evidence of a consistent ordering of methods.
Estimating dynamic copula dependence using intraday data

Abstract We estimate the dynamic daily dependence between assets by applying the Semiparametric Copula-Based Multivariate Dynamic (SCOMDY) model on intraday data. Using tick data of three stock returns of the period before and during the credit crisis, we find that our dependence estimator better captures the steep increase in dependence during the onset of the crisis as compared to other commonly used time-varying copula methods. Like other high-frequency estimators, we find that the dependence estimator exhibits long memory and forecast it using a HAR model. We show that for out-of-sample forecasts, our dependence estimator performs better than the constant estimator and other commonly used time-varying copula dependence estimators.
Mutation Update and Review of Severe Methylenetetrahydrofolate Reductase Deficiency

Severe 5,10‐methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) deficiency is caused by mutations in the MTHFR gene and results in hyperhomocysteinemia and varying severity of disease, ranging from neonatal lethal to adult onset. Including those described here, 109 MTHFR mutations have been reported in 171 families, consisting of 70 missense mutations, 17 that primarily affect splicing, 11 nonsense mutations, seven small deletions, two no‐stop mutations, one small duplication, and one large duplication. Only 36% of mutations recur in unrelated families, indicating that most are “private. ” The most common mutation is c.1530A>G (numbered from NM_005957.4, p.Lys510 = ) causing a splicing defect, found in 13 families; the most common missense mutation is c.1129C>T (p.Arg377Cys) identified in 10 families. To increase disease understanding, we report enzymatic activity, detected mutations, and clinical onset information (early, <1 year; or late, >1 year) for all published patients available, demonstrating that patients with early onset have less residual enzyme activity than those presenting later. We also review animal models, diagnostic approaches, clinical presentations, and treatment options. This is the first large review of mutations in MTHFR, highlighting the wide spectrum of disease‐causing mutations.
Nanovesicular Formulation of Brimonidine Tartrate for the Management of Glaucoma: In Vitro and In Vivo Evaluation

In this study, nanovesicles were developed for brimonidine tartrate by film hydration technique and dispersed in viscous carbopol solution for ocular delivery. Scanning electron microscopy revealed spherical shape of the vesicles. As high as 32.27% drug entrapment efficiency was achieved depending upon the surfactant/cholesterol molar ratio (7:4 to 7:8). The vesicles were in the size range of 298.0–587.9 nm. Release study showed a biphasic drug-release pattern for the lyophilized vesicular formulation in buffered saline solution, i.e., initial burst release followed by gradual release over the period of 8 h. On contrary, the isolated vesicles reduced the burst effect in 3 h by two to three times and the drug release was comparatively slower at the intermediate ratio in both cases. With variation in cholesterol content, the drug release followed either first order or Higuchi’s kinetics. Physically the lyophilized vesicular formulations were more stable at refrigerated temperature. DSC and X-RD analyses indicated loss of drug crystallinity in the vesicles. FTIR spectroscopy did not reveal any interaction between drug and excipients. The lyophilized formulation showed better ocular hypotensive activity than marketed drops on albino rabbits and in vivo efficacy was sustained up to 7.5 h. Furthermore, the formulation was found to be non-irritant to the rabbit eye. Hence, the lyophilized vesicles, when dispersed in viscous carbopol solution, had the potential in reducing dosing frequency and could improve patient compliance.
Technology transfer of simulation analysis methodology: One man's opinion

In this tutorial I provide some thoughts based on my own experience about how the analysis methodology research community might be more successful in having a meaningful impact outside of our group. Areas discussed include why technology transfer has seemed to be more effective in optimization and statistics; the audience for analysis methodology; various modes of technology transfer; technology transfer specifically to commercial software; educating consumers of analysis methodology; and how we might think differently about research.
Treatment Failure of a TLR-7 Agonist Occurs Due to Self-Regulation of Acute Inflammation and Can Be Overcome by IL-10 Blockade

Multiple TLR agonists have been shown to have antitumor effects in animal models. However, the therapeutic efficacy of TLR agonist monotherapy in cancer treatment has been limited, and the mechanisms of failure remain unknown. We demonstrate that topical treatment with a TLR-7 agonist, imiquimod, can elicit significant regression of spontaneous breast cancers in neu transgenic mice, a model of human HER-2/neu+ breast cancer. However, tumor growth progressed once imiquimod therapy was ended. Gene expression analysis using tumor-derived RNA demonstrated that imiquimod induced high levels of IL-10 in addition to TNF-α and IFN-γ. Elevated levels of circulating IL-10 were also detected in sera from imiquimod-treated mice. Elevated serum IL-10 appeared to be derived from IL-10 and dual cytokine secreting (IFN-γ+ and IL-10+) CD4+ T cells rather than CD4+CD25+Foxp3+ T regulatory cells, which were also induced by imiquimod treatment. Blockade of IL-10, but not TGF-β, enhanced the antitumor effect of imiquimod by significantly prolonging survival in treated mice. These data suggest that the excessive inflammation induced by TLR agonists may result in a self-regulatory immunosuppression via IL-10 induction and that blocking IL-10 could enhance the therapeutic efficacy of these agents.
The Evolution of the Regulation of Labour in the USSR, the CIS and the Baltic States, 1985–2009

This article is a first systematic study of employment protection legislation in the 15 successor states of the USSR over the last two and a half decades. The analysis is based on new and unique data assembled using OECD methodology. We find that the dynamics of employment protection in the region resemble an inverted U-shaped pattern with the peak of labour market rigidity occurring in the mid-1990s in CIS countries and a decade later in the Baltic states. By now, the former Soviet states as a group are similar to the EU-15 and OECD countries in terms of the overall employment protection legislation index, although they differ in terms of contributions to the overall employment protection legislation of its three major components, namely, regulation of permanent contracts, temporary contracts and collective dismissals.
Non-parametric Camera-Based Calibration of Optical See-Through Glasses for AR Applications

This work describes a non-parametric camera-based method for the calibration of Optical See-Through Glasses (OSTG). Existing works model the optical system through perspective projection and parametric functions. In the border areas of the displays such models are often inadequate. Moreover, rigid calibration patterns, that produce only a small amount of non-equidistant point correspondences, are used. In order to overcome these disadvantages every single display pixel is calibrated individually. The error prone user interaction is avoided by using cameras placed behind the displays of the OSTG. The displays show a shifting pattern that is used to calculate the pixels' locations. A camera mounted rigidly on the OSTG is used to find the relations between the system components. The obtained results show better accuracies than in previous works and prove that a second calibration step for user adaptation is necessary for high accuracy applications.
Wages and Contracting Out: Does the Law of One Price Hold?

We find that, conditioning on industry of assignment, cleaners and security guards who participate in activities organized by contract companies earn 15 and 17 per cent less, respectively, than workers in those activities organized in-house. These estimates are hardly affected by the inclusion of a set of jointly statistically significant exogenous variables. We can expect that most of the productive traits that characterize a task are transferred to the contractor in the process of contracting out a cleaning or security task. Thus, our findings are hard to rationalize by a simple competitive labour market setting where the law of one price holds.
Aftereffects in the responses of cat muscle spindles.

Responses have been recorded from primary endings of muscle spindles in the cat soleus muscle. Changes in spindle responsiveness were measured following a period of conditioning that consisted of a series of rapid stretches or of tetanic ventral root stimulation. In the testing procedure the response of a single spindle afferent was recorded to stimulation of a dynamic fusimotor axon during a slow stretch. Changes in gross afferent discharge coming from the muscle were measured by integrating the activity recorded in dorsal roots. If, after conditioning stretches, the muscle was immediately returned to its initial length, the spindle responded to the test fusimotor stimulation with a high-frequency burst of afferent impulses. If the muscle was held stretched for 3 s after conditioning the response to the brief test tetanus was small or "depressed. " It has been suggested that conditioning stretches result in detachment of stable crossbridges in intrafusal fibers and that these bridges then reform over the next few seconds at whatever length the muscle happens to have at the time. When it is long, shortening the muscle back to the initial length leads to the development of slack in intrafusal fibers because of the passive stiffness they have acquired from the presence of the stable bridges. Under these conditions a brief test fusimotor tetanus will lead to a depressed response because the slack must first be taken up before a full response can be generated. It was possible to reverse the depression by interposing an extrafusal contraction during the period between the conditioning and test sequences. It is suggested that lateral compression from the contracting extrafusal fibers and the stretch they impose as they relax reduces any intrafusal slack and thereby reduces the depression. A more quantitative measure of intrafusal slack than the test for depression is to determine the delay in onset of the afferent response to a longer fusimotor tetanus. The delay was short a long initial muscle lengths where, if the muscle was left undisturbed, it soon disappeared completely and spontaneously. It is suggested that at long lengths passive tension in the muscle tends to remove any slack in intrafusal fibers and therefore removes any after effects. The rise in resting discharge of muscle afferents after a conditioning tetanus applied to the ventral root ("postcontraction sensory discharge") can be accounted for by the same hypothesis. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Food log by analyzing food images

In this paper, a food-logging system that can distinguish food images from other images, analyze the food balance, and visualize the log is presented. The image processing is based on feature vectors consisting of color histograms, DCT coefficients, detected image patterns and so forth. Support Vector Machine (SVM) was used to detect food images and to analyze the food balance. Experimental results show that the food image extraction presents above 88% of accuracy and the food balance estimation is achieved with more than 73% of accuracy.
A conceptual framework to analyse hospital competitiveness

This article proposes a conceptual framework to analyse hospital competitiveness at the organisational level. Hospital competitiveness, defined as the capacity a hospital has to develop a superior performance that leads it to a position of competitive advantage, may be analysed in three dimensions: organisation, strategic behaviour, and performance. Based on previous studies and on the current structural adjustment in the Portuguese public hospital sector, this article suggests the following categories: legal status, organisational complexity, and resources for the organisation dimension; stakeholders, services and inter-organisational relationships for the strategic behaviour dimension; and type of indicators, efficiency and effectiveness, and benchmarking for the performance dimension. This framework seems to be particularly useful in evaluating Portuguese hospital competitiveness and providing insights for hospitals' managers and public decision makers both from Portugal and other countries.
A Bayesian analysis on the effect of multiple supply options in a quick response environment

In the apparel industry, vendors often suffer from high mismatches in supply and demand. To cope with this problem, they procure the same style product from different suppliers with different manufacturing costs. Especially in the quick response environment, which allows vendors to monitor trends in customer demand and search for available suppliers through the electronic market, they have additional opportunities to improve their decision‐making. In this paper, we propose an analytical profit maximization model and develop efficient decision tools to help both the middle and lower level managers pursuing this strategy. Furthermore, we have shown how significantly the vendors' potential competitive edge can be improved by exploiting multiple supply options, even at the expense of high premium procurement costs for late orders. The effect is critical, especially in a highly competitive market, and it has important implications for the top managers. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2003
Prediction of the parachute deploy for landing at the desired point

In this paper, we introduce how to predict the parachute deploy for landing at the desired point. The UAV-parachute system is required 9-DOF dynamic modeling, so we build up the equations of motion for this system. And then the input and the output data sets are trained to compose the neural network. The input data sets are the flight conditions such as the deploy position, UAV's velocity, and wind velocity and the output data sets are the landing points such as the cross range and the down range position that simulated by the 9-DOF dynamic modeling. Using the training input and output data sets we can build up the nonlinear function approximator for the neural network. So we can predict the deploy timing and conditions such as the deploy position, UAV's velocity for landing at the desired point.
Throughput optimization for Cognitive Radio while bulwarking Primary User

Electromagnetic spectrum, a natural limited resource, with the boom in applications of wireless communications, that limited resource is becoming congested more and more and the only solution for efficient spectrum utilization is Cognitive Radios, moreover spectrum sensing is the most irrefutably functionality in CRs and with spectrum sensing, throughput for secondary user's transmission plays an important role. In this paper after performing spectrum sensing using energy detection scheme, we have achieved the optimized throughput for Secondary User by ensuring the protection of Primary User's rights. For a total time in a frame, least time for sensing is desired and the residual time in that frame is used for transmission. Two parameters related to sensing are fallacious alarm probability and detection probability pertaining to secondary and primary users correspondingly, greater the probability of detection, more the licensed user's rights are protected, smaller the fallacious alarm probability, greater chance of using the underutilized band, applying the most famous technique known as energy detection scheme. In this paper we studied the problem of conniving sensing time in order to achieve maximum and optimal transmission time for secondary user keeping the restraint that licensed user is adequately bulwarked. Maximum achievable throughput was achieved with least sensing time, not achieved in previous work.
High sensitive PCF based chemical sensor for ethanol detection

In this paper, a high sensitive photonic crystal fiber structure has been presented for ethanol sensing. Optical properties of the guided mode have been analyzed using full vectorial finite element method. We have investigated the sensing properties varying different geometrical properties of the proposed structure. We have optimized the design parameters of the proposed PCF which are responsible for high sensitivity. The simulation results show that the sensitivity and the confinement loss of the proposed photonic crystal fiber are 34% and 1.2×10-4 dB/m respectively at the wavelength of 1. 33μm.
Localisation of Drosophila embryos using active contours in channel spaces

In this paper, we introduce an active contour based scheme to localise Drosophila embryos in RGB images. An active contour (initiated as a closed one) maybe converge to an open contour, e.g., in the case that a targeting embryo is touched by a neighbouring one. We propose an algorithmic strategy to detect and restore open active contours. The experiment results show the promise of the proposed scheme.
Information density of encodings: The role of syntactic variation in comprehension

The Uniform Information Density (UID) hypothesis links production strategies with comprehension processes, predicting that speakers will utilize flexibility in encoding in order to increase uniformity in the rate of information transmission, as measured by surprisal (Jaeger, 2010). Evidence in support of UID comes primarily from studies focusing on word-level effects, e.g. demonstrating that surprisal predicts the omission/inclusion of optional words. Here we investigate whether comprehenders are sensitive to the information density of alternative encodings that are more syntactically complex. We manipulated the syntactic encoding of complex noun phrases in German via meaning-preserving pre-nominal and post-nominal modification in contexts that were either predictive or non-predictive. We then used the G-maze reading task to measure online comprehension during self-paced reading. Results were consistent with the UID hypothesis. In predictive contexts, post-nominal encodings elicited a more uniform distribution of processing effort. Conversely, in non-predictive contexts, more uniform effort was found for pre-nominal encodings.
Recognition of Distinct Cross-Reactive Virus-Specific CD8+ T Cells Reveals a Unique TCR Signature in a Clinical Setting

Human CMV still remains problematic in immunocompromised patients, particularly after solid organ transplantation. CMV primary disease and reactivation greatly increase the risks associated with incidences of chronic allograft rejection and decreased survival in transplant recipients. But whether this is due to direct viral effects, indirect viral effects including cross-reactive antiviral T cell immunopathology, or a combination of both remains undetermined. In this article, we report the novel TCR signature of cross-reactive HLA-A*02:01 (A2) CMV (NLVPMVATV [NLV])–specific CD8+ T cells recognizing a specific array of HLA-B27 alleles using technical advancements that combine both IFN-γ secretion and multiplex nested RT-PCR for determining paired CDR3α/β sequences from a single cell. This study represents the first evidence, to our knowledge, of the same A2-restricted cross-reactive NLV-specific TCR-α/β signature (TRAV3TRAJ31_TRBV12-4TRBJ1-1) in two genetically distinct individuals. Longitudinal posttransplant monitoring of a lung transplant recipient (A2, CMV seropositive) who received a HLA-B27 bilateral lung allograft showed a dynamic expansion of the cross-reactive NLV-specific TCR repertoire before CMV reactivation. After resolution of the active viral infection, the frequency of cross-reactive NLV-specific CD8+ T cells reduced to previremia levels, thereby demonstrating immune modulation of the T cell repertoire due to antigenic pressure. The dynamic changes in TCR repertoire, at a time when CMV reactivation was subclinical, illustrates that prospective monitoring in susceptible patients can reveal nuances in immune profiles that may be clinically relevant.
A Critical Analysis of the Product-Service Dichotomy in Operations Management

ABSTRACT Many theories and concepts that were initially developed for manufacturing operations have also been applied to operations and processes that are primarily meant for the rendering of services. Despite this evident interchangeability with regards to products and services, basic differentiating factors between them still remain in the literature. This paper proposes that the product-service dichotomy is not only of little relevance, but that it is also potentially detrimental to the strategic formulation and the decision-making process of operations. Additionally, it proposes a new attribute classification for value packages,1 taking into consideration the attributes underlying the differentiating factors highlighted in the literature. RESUMEN. Diversas teorías y conceptos, desarrollados inicialmente para las operaciones de manufactura, también fueron aplicadas a operaciones y procesos orientados en primera instancia a la rendición de servicios. A pesar de esta obvia intercambiabilidad entre los productos y servicios, los factores básicos de diferenciación entre ambos permanecen en la literatura. Este estudio propone que la dicotomía producto-servicio no sólo es insignificante, sino que tambin, es potencialmente perjudicial a la formulación estratégica y al proceso de toma de decisiones de la operación. Ademàs, también propone una nueva clasificación de los atributos para nuevos paquetes de valor, tomando en consideración los atributos subyacentes a los factores de diferenciación subrayados en la literatura. RESUMO. Diversas teorias e conceitos, inicialmente desenvolvidos para as operações de manufatura, těm sido aplicados também nas operações e processos voltados primordialmente para a prestaçao de serviços. Apesar desta clara interrelaçao entre produtos e serviços, há fatores basicamente diferenciados entre eles, segundo a literatura. Este estudo demonstra que a dicotomia produto-serviço nao é apenas insigni-ficante, mas que é potencialmente prejudicial para a formulaçao estratégica e para o processo decisório das operações. O estudo propõe, ainda, uma nova classificação de atributos para pacotes de valor, lev-ando em consideração os atributos determinantes dos fatores diferenci-ados, destacados na literatura.