Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Repeatability of ocular biomechanical data measurements with a Scheimpflug-based noncontact device on normal corneas.

PURPOSE To analyze the repeatability of a new device measuring ocular biomechanical properties, central corneal thickness (CCT), and intraocular pressure (IOP) and to investigate these parameters and their correlations in healthy eyes. METHODS Three consecutive measurements were performed on each eye using the CorVis ST device (Oculus Optikgeräte, Inc., Wetzler, Germany). Ten specific parameters, CCT, and IOP were measured. Biometric data were recorded with IOLMaster (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Jena, Germany). RESULTS This study comprised 75 eyes of 75 healthy volunteers (mean age: 61.24 ± 15.72 years). Mean IOP was 15.02 ± 2.90 mm Hg and mean CCT was 556.33 ± 33.13 μm. Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.865 for IOP and 0.970 for CCT, and coefficient of variation was 0.069 for IOP and 0.008 for CCT. ICC was 0.758 for maximum amplitude at highest concavity and 0.784 for first applanation time, and less than 0.6 for all other parameters. The device-specific data showed no significant relationship with age and axial length. Flattest and steepest keratometric values and IOP showed a significant correlation with the 10 device-specific parameters. CONCLUSIONS The CorVis ST showed high repeatability for only IOP and pachymetric values. Single measurements are not reliable for the 10 device-specific parameters. The device allows for conducting clinical examinations and screening for surgeries altering ocular biomechanical properties with some form of averaging of multiple measurements.
Crowding-out or shying-away: impact of corporate income tax on capital structure choice of firms in Pakistan

This article aims to investigate whether corporate income taxes affect the capital structure of nonfinancial firms listed on Karachi Stock Exchange Pakistan during 1972–2010. Empirical results suggest that taxes are positively related to total debt ratio and short-term debt ratio, whereas they are negatively related to long-term debt ratio. The negative relationship between taxes and long-term debt ratio appears illogical considering the tax advantage of debt in the presence of the corporate income tax. However, the observed crowding-out of corporate debt financing due to the presence of nondebt tax shields provides some logic on the demand side. While on the supply side the banks shy away from long-term debt in peculiar socioeconomic realities of Pakistan. The mixed relationships of corporate income tax with different measures of capital structure partially confirm the prophecy of trade-off theory in Pakistan. In addition, we find that other firm-specific variables which appear to significantly influence the capital structure choice of firms are profitability, collateral value of assets and firm size.
Retention: predicting first-year success

Universities and technikons have been struggling to meet the demands of growing numbers of students who enter higher education with limited skills. Higher Education literature abroad provides an exhaustive range of theory about the reasons for students leaving (cited in Strauss & Volkwein 2002), as well as proposals for positive intervention. It is critical for administrators in South Africa to understand the unique combination of factors contributing to student attrition at their institutions. This study aims to predict the probability for a first-time entering student to register and pass all required first-year courses at Technikon Pretoria using various predictor variables. The results from this study indicate that the Grade 12 aggregate and major field of study were the most important predictors for the success of students in the first year. The results of the study can also be incorporated into enrollment planning within the institution. South African Journal of Higher Education Vol.17(2) 2003: 169-170
Inequalities Relating Critical Exponents

During modern era of critical phenomena, several inequalities between critical exponents have been derived. However most of these inequalities depend on some assumptions. Beside this, some of these inequalities can be replaced by equalities. Several solved classical models as well as some recent theories have helped us to check the validity of these inequalities. To check these inequalities in lab, experiments should be done in very close temperature to the critical temperature and therefore there have been difficulty to check precisely these inequalities. However, there have been enough results to study the behaviors of these inequalities as well as the critical exponents.
Unconventional Myosin VIIA Is a Novel A-kinase-anchoring Protein*

To gain an insight into the cellular function of the unconventional myosin VIIA, we sought proteins interacting with its tail region, using the yeast two-hybrid system. Here we report on one of the five candidate interactors we identified, namely the type Iα regulatory subunit (RIα) of protein kinase A. The interaction of RIα with myosin VIIA tail was demonstrated by coimmunoprecipitation from transfected HEK293 cells. Analysis of deleted constructs in the yeast two-hybrid system showed that the interaction of myosin VIIA with RIα involves the dimerization domain of RIα. In vitrobinding assays identified the C-terminal “4.1, ezrin, radixin, moesin” (FERM)-like domain of myosin VIIA as the interacting domain. In humans and mice, mutations in the myosin VIIAgene underlie hereditary hearing loss, which may or may not be associated with visual deficiency. Immunohistofluorescence revealed that myosin VIIA and RIα are coexpressed in the outer hair cells of the cochlea and rod photoreceptor cells of the retina. Our results strongly suggest that myosin VIIA is a novel protein kinase A-anchoring protein that targets protein kinase A to definite subcellular sites of these sensory cells.
In Vitro Set-Up of Modified Blalock Taussig Shunt: Vascular Resistance-Flow Relationship

Background A modified Blalock-Taussig (mBT) shunt is an anastomosis created between the systemic and pulmonary arterial tree in order to improve pulmonary blood flow in neonates and children with congenital heart disease. The aim of this study was to assess vascular resistance-flow relationship in an in vitro set-up of a modified Blalock Taussig shunt. Methods A shunt set-up was constructed with the vessels of a sheep. A modified BT shunt was anastomosed between an innominate (brachiocephalic) and a right pulmonary artery. A Medos pump (ventricular assist device) was used to create pulsatile flow. Three different mean pulmonary artery flow rates (QPA) were applied. Once mean pulmonary and mean aortic flows (QAO) were fixed, shunt flow rates for twelve different pulmonary vascular resistances (Rp) were investigated. Results For all three pulmonary flow rates, the shunt flow decreased with increasing pulmonary resistance. In addition, systemic flow decreased compared to pulmonary flow. When pulmonary flow rate was set at 800 ml/min and aorta flow rate at 900 ml/min, the distribution of flow between pulmonary and systemic organs flow rates ranged between 69% - 70% and 30% - 31% respectively. Similarly, when both pulmonary and aorta flow rates were set at 900 ml/min, pulmonary and systemic organ flows ranged between 73% - 77% and 23% - 27% respectively. For pulmonary and aorta flow rates of 1000 ml/min and 900 ml/min, respectively, the distribution of flow between pulmonary and systemic organ flow rates varied between 79% - 83% and 17% - 21% respectively. Conclusion Knowledge of the relationship between vascular resistances and flow in this surgically created in vitro mBT shunt set-up may be helpful in the clinical management of the patients whose survival is crucially dependent on the blood flow distribution between the pulmonary and systemic circulation.
Sub-centring and Commuting: Evidence from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1980-90

Like many large US metropolitan areas, the San Francisco Bay Area has experienced rapid suburban employment growth since 1980, much of it concentrated in sub-centres. This paper shows that, contrary to the co-location hypothesis, employment decentralisation has not been associated with shorter average commute distances or durations in the Bay Area. Combining statistics on shifts in modal splits and average vehicle occupancy levels reveals that parallelling the region's sub-centring trend has been a substantial increase in average commute vehicle miles travelled (VMT) per employee between 1980 and 1990. The largest increases occurred in the fastest-growing and most remote suburban centres. Using decomposition analysis, we found that increasing commute distances contributed the most to rising commute VMT per employee, and the distance factor had proportionately the greatest effect on rising commute VMT rates in the most peripheral work centres. Since shifts in commute VMT per employee are thought to be strongly associated with transport externalities, we conclude that the social and environmental implications of the Bay Area's regional growth trends deserve more public policy attention than given to date.
The effects of the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and early lactation on haematology and plasma biochemistry in the baboon (Papio hamadryas)

The changes in the haematology and clinical biochemistry associated with the different stages of the menstrual cycle, gestation and lactation in the baboon (Papio hamadryas) were evaluated in a prospective longitudinal study. Serial EDTA and heparin blood samples were collected from 12 baboons. Haemoglobin concentration, haematorcrit, red blood cell and white blood cell counts were decreased in the luteal compared to the follicular phase (P<0.001); the reverse effect was observed for platelet count, total protein and albumin concentrations. The changes in plasma concentrations of sodium, potassium, urea, creatinine and cholesterol and plasma osmolality were characterized by reductions (P<0.01) in early pregnancy which were maintained throughout gestation. Plasma concentrations of total protein, albumin and alkaline phosphatase, as well as haemoglobin, haematocrit and red cell count were reduced (P<0.001) from mid‐gestation. Platelet count and plasma calcium concentration fell continuously throughout gestation (P<0.001). Plasma triglycerides were lower and plasma iron was higher (P<0.01) in gestation compared to the phases of the menstrual cycle and lactation. By 1 week post partum, all parameters except haemaglobin had returned to pre‐conception levels.
Optimal Resource Allocation for Power-Efficient MC-NOMA With Imperfect Channel State Information

In this paper, we study power-efficient resource allocation for multicarrier non-orthogonal multiple access systems. The resource allocation algorithm design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem which jointly designs the power allocation, rate allocation, user scheduling, and successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding policy for minimizing the total transmit power. The proposed framework takes into account the imperfection of channel state information at transmitter and quality of service requirements of users. To facilitate the design of optimal SIC decoding policy on each subcarrier, we define a channel-to-noise ratio outage threshold. Subsequently, the considered non-convex optimization problem is recast as a generalized linear multiplicative programming problem, for which a globally optimal solution is obtained via employing the branch-and-bound approach. The optimal resource allocation policy serves as a system performance benchmark due to its high computational complexity. To strike a balance between system performance and computational complexity, we propose a suboptimal iterative resource allocation algorithm based on difference of convex programming. Simulation results demonstrate that the suboptimal scheme achieves a close-to-optimal performance. Also, both proposed schemes provide significant transmit power savings than that of conventional orthogonal multiple access schemes.
Stock Returns and Real Activity: a Century of Evidence

This paper analyzes the relation between real stock returns and real activity from 1889-1988. It replicates Fama's (1990) results for the 1953-87 period using an additional 65 years of data. It also compares two measures of industrial production in the tests: (1) the series produced by Babson for 1889-1918, spliced with the Federal Reserve Board index of industrial production for 1919-1988, and (2) the new Miron and Romer (1989) index spliced with the Fed index in 1941. Fama's findings are robust for a much longer period -- future production growth rates explain a large fraction of the variation in stock returns. The new Miron-Romer measure of industrial production is less closely related to stock price movements than the older Babson and Federal Reserve Board measures.
Acute promyelocytic leukaemia in patients originating in Latin America is associated with an increased frequency of the bcr1 subtype of the PML/RARα fusion gene

Summary. The PML/RARα fusion gene in acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL) has three subtypes based on the breakpoint site of the PML gene: long (bcr1), short (bcr3) and variable (bcr2) subtypes. The PML/RARα fusion protein is involved in the pathogenesis of APL and the breakpoint site of the PML gene might be associated with aetiological factor(s). Because APL is over‐represented in patients that originate in Latin America (Latinos), we evaluated whether the distribution of the PML/RARα fusion mRNA in this population is different to that reported in non‐Latinos. Among 52 APL patients (28 from Mexico and Central America diagnosed in Los Angeles and 24 from Peru, South America), bcr1, bcr2 and bcr3 expression was 75%, 10% and 15% respectively. However, bcr1 breakpoints were significantly higher compared with non‐Latino patients (340/654, 52%) reported in four studies. Often bcr1 and bcr2 are reported together; 862 (60%) of 1429 non‐Latino APL patients reported in nine studies were either bcr1 or bcr2, compared with 44 (85%) in our 52 Latino patients. This difference was also statistically significant when our patients were compared to each of the individual studies from USA and Europe, but not for a small series from China and Japan. These results suggest that the overrepresentation of APL among Latin American patients can be accounted for by an increase of a single subtype – bcr1, and the breakage sites in the PML gene may not be random but possibly influenced by genetic and/or environmental factor(s).
Algebraic XML construction in Natix

While using an algebra that acts on sets of variable bindings for evaluating XML queries, the problem of constructing XML from these bindings arises. One approach is to define a powerful operator that is able to perform a complex construction of a representation of the XML result document. The drawback is that such an operator in its generality is hard to implement and disables algebraic optimization since it has to be executed last in the plan. Therefore we suggest to construct XML documents by special query execution plans called construction plans built from simple, easy to implement and efficient operators. The paper proposes four simple algebraic operators needed for XML document construction. Further we introduce an optimizing translation algorithm of construction clauses into algebraic expressions.
Entrepreneurship, technological progress and resource allocation efficiency: a case of China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the role of entrepreneurship in promoting China's technological progress and efficiency improvement during the economic reform process of the past two decades. The paper contributes to our understanding of the drivers of economic growth in China during the economic reforms period through the study of technology development and efficiency of resource allocation.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses Malmquist productivity index and panel data cointegration covering 30 regions in China for the period 1992‐2007, to test the effect of entrepreneurship on Chinese technological progress and resource allocation efficiency.Findings – The analysis shows that the rate of entrepreneurship in China improves the level of technological progress and efficiency of resource allocation significantly. The increased level of entrepreneurship in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong and other developed areas is positively related to the.
Exploring the nexus between urbanisation, services sector expansion, aid and growth in Fiji

The study explores the contributory powers of urbanisation, services sector expansion and development assistance on per worker income in Fiji over the periods 1981-2009 using the ARDL bounds approach. The results show that sectors like tourism, information and communications technology, financial sector development besides urbanisation and development assistance are positively contributing to long-run growth and development. Therefore, sound urban planning, improving infrastructure, promoting Fiji as a choice of tourist destination, advancing and improving availability, affordability and accessibility of technology, financial inclusion and strengthening donor relations are pertinent matters for policy discourse.
The US finance wage premium before and after the financial crisis: a decomposition exercise

Does the recent financial crisis change the wage structures of the US finance and nonfinance sectors? In this article, we study the wage gap between workers in these two sectors between 1990 and 2011. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find that the finance wage premium increased over time and only dropped modestly during the crisis. Using the Oaxaca–Blinder method to decompose the wage gap into ‘explained’ and ‘unexplained’ parts, we also find that the wage gap was entirely driven by unexplained factors.
The distinct transcriptomes of slow and fast adult muscles are delineated by noncoding RNAs

Adult muscles have a vast adaptation capacity, enabling function switches in response to altered conditions. During intensive physical activity, disease, or aging, adult skeletal muscles change and adjust their functions. The competence to adjust varies among muscles. Muscle‐specific molecular mechanisms in healthy and normal conditions could designate changes in physiologic and pathologic conditions. We generated deep mRNA‐sequencing data in adult fast and slow mouse muscles, and applying paired analysis, we identified that the muscle‐specific signatures are composed of half of the muscle transcriptome. The fast muscles showed a more compact gene network that is concordant with homogenous myofiber typing, compared with the pattern in the slow muscle. The muscle‐specific mRNA landscape did not correlate with alternative spicing, alternative polyadenylation, or the expression of muscle transcription factor gene networks. However, we found significant correlation between the differentially expressed noncoding RNAs, microRNAs (miRNAs) and long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and their target genes. More than 25% of the genes expressed in a muscle‐specific fashion were found to be targets of muscle‐specific miRNAs and lncRNAs. We suggest that muscle‐specific miRNAs and lncRNAs contribute to the establishment of muscle‐specific transcriptomes in adult muscles. —Raz, V. , Riaz, M. , Tatum, Z. , Kielbasa, S. M. , 'tHoen, P. A. C. The distinct transcriptomes of slow and fast adult muscles are delineated by noncoding RNAs. FASEB J. 32,1579‐1590 (2018). www.fasebj. org
Capitalization, Equalization, and Intergovernmental Aid

This article makes a simple but heretofore unappreciated point: In urban areas, voter movement will cause equalizing intergovernmental aid (such as state education aid) to be capitalized into the value of housing. Because poor voters are likely to be renters, they will have to pay for better schools created by state aid through higher housing costs. To establish this point, the article describes a very simple model of an urban area with two communities and three income groups. In the case of an urban area in which the central city is not large relative to the metropolitan region, the welfare effect of intergovernmental aid on poor voters is completely offset by higher housing costs. Rather than increasing the total resources available to poor people, intergovernmental aid amounts to a Hicksian price adjustment that leaves the poor no better off than before. The article then discusses real-world complications to the model, including alternative decision-making mechanisms and preferences, and concludes that capitalization is an important overlooked feature in education grant systems.
Effects of Analysts’ Ratings on Insurer Stock Returns: Evidence of Asymmetric Responses

We examine the information value contained in insurer rating changes. Using a contemporary event study approach, we document an asymmetric reaction of stock prices to rating changes: downgrades cut share prices by approximately 7 percent but upgrades have little significant effect. This result varies across agencies as share prices react more strongly to A.M. Best and Standard & Poor's downgrades than to Moody's. We observe a similar asymmetric reaction to rating changes subject to a common rating benchmark. Finally, we find that prices fall most dramatically when a rating downgrade from one rating agency follows a downgrade from another agency.
A simple bi-layered architecture to enhance the liveness of a robot

It is important for a robot to appropriately respond to its surrounding environment and events to communicate smoothly with humans as opposed to following fixed movements specified in advance. In this paper, a simple bi-layered architecture (SB architecture) is proposed to integrate behaviors in two stages: prioritization and weighted averaging. In addition, SB architecture integrates voluntary movements by prioritization and integrates involuntary and reflex movements by weighted averaging, thereby generating robot behaviors that immediately respond to events that occur around the robot. What advantages SB architecture has are that it can easily generate various behaviors by combining multiple behaviors and that it is possible to propose a simple design for robot behavior. Furthermore, since behavior occurs in response to sensors, the robot's behaviors are reactive to the surrounding environment and events. In particular, if a robot performs the behavior necessary for communication with humans, such as changing its gaze and gestures, it is possible to ensure that the robot possesses liveness to promote communication with humans. In addition, since SB architecture has a simple structure to facilitate the design of robots, it is possible to automatically set parameters by optimizing the parameters using pairs of sensor information and ideal behaviors. The optimization of the parameters leads to generating behaviors characterized with liveness by appropriately combining behaviors.