Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Are Mortality Rates Random Walk ? Panel Unit-root Tests with the Evidences from Micro Data *

This study investigates the relationship between economic conditions and health. Previous studies have estimated that they have a significantly negative correlation. However, there is a concern that mortality rates are non-stationary series, with which a chance of spurious correlation exhibits. By taking first difference on regressors and conducting unit-root tests for panel data, it shows some evidences that the unit-root concern is reasonable and the association between health and economic shocks is exaggerated. An accompanying analysis of micro data indicates that the influence of risky behaviors on mortality rate in response to economic conditions cannot match the extent to which the basic fixed-effect model predicted.
Assessing the quality of care for patients with first-episode psychosis.

INTRODUCTION This study evaluated the quality of care in an early psychosis intervention programme (EPIP), as compared to standard treatment received by patients prior to the inception of the programme. METHODS The medical records of 50 patients with first-episode psychosis (FEP) who received psychiatric treatment in the calendar year of 2000, i.e. prior to the implementation of EPIP, and 87 FEP patients who were accepted in the EPIP, were reviewed for a period of one year. These patients were aged between 18 and 40 years. Each medical record was reviewed for a list of process indicators, which were identified from the published literature and other treatment guidelines, and covered different domains. RESULTS None of the pre-EPIP patients met all the 13 process indicators, whereas 48 percent of EPIP patients met all the indicators (p-value is less than 0.001). Using the default rate as a proxy of outcome, we found that 19 percent of EPIP patients had defaulted at the end of one year, whereas the default rate was 52 percent for the pre-EPIP patients (p-value is less than 0.001). CONCLUSION It is possible to improve the quality of care in patients with FEP through the use of treatment guidelines, regular monitoring of symptoms and side effects, and periodic audits.
Transtorno da compulsão alimentar periódica

Binge eating disorder was first described in 1955. However, its upgrade to a diagnostic category only occurred in 1994, when it was included in appendix B of DSM IV, with provisory criteria. It is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating, without any compensatory behavior to prevent a possible weight gain. Uncertainties about the diagnostic criteria like the amount of food ingested, the duration or the value of the loss of control during a binge eating episode make its characterization difficult. Then, epidemiological studies may reveal the characterization of this disorder. This means that more studies are needed for an appropriate evaluation of this pathology.
Learning through inquiry

Inquiry learning is an intriguing and exciting way to teach. It involves students as active learners, learning real life skills. Traditional student and teacher roles are changed from a “sage on the stage” approach to a collaborative relationship. Inquiry learning is very adaptable and can be used to different extents depending on desired learning outcomes. Inquiry learning is based on wonder and the questions that naturally emerge when engaged in active learning. In an elementary math class, inquiry learning might look quite different than in a science high school activity. It can be used in all disciplines and has been proven to be an effective teaching strategy through numerous research projects. Following is a summary of some of the aspects of inquiry learning from a number of different sources. This is meant to be a general guide without getting into all the details of different inquiry applications. Start where you are comfortable (maybe just by adding some inquiry questions to a unit) and enjoy watching your students become engaged, self-driven learners.
Efficient Mapping and Allocation of Execution Units to Task Graphs using an Evolutionary Framework

Partial dynamic reconfiguration of FPGAs gives designers the capability to change certain parts of the hardware while other parts remain active and in use. This provides several benefits including reducing device count and power consumption. However, this also introduces new challenges that need to be addressed by designers. This paper introduces a framework for efficient mapping of execution units to task graphs in a runtime reconfigurable system. The framework utilizes an Island Based Genetic Algorithm flow that optimizes several objectives including delay and power consumption. The GA based technique not only optimizes the above objectives, but also aggregates the Pareto front of the different islands to further enhance solution quality. The Island based GA runs each GA in parallel, and is amenable to both software and hardware implementation. The proposed Island based GA framework achieves on average 55.2% improvement over a single GA implementation and 80.7% improvement over a baseline random allocation and binding approach.
Literature and TEFL: Towards the Reintroduction of Literatures in English in the Francophone Secondary School Curriculum in Cameroon

Literature was once regarded as being inappropriate for the teaching of the English language. Nowadays, the importance of applying literature in the development of learners’ language skills is receiving a lot of attention by EFL/ESL practitioners worldwide (Lee 2009). In spite of such “remarkable revival of interest in literature" in the English language classroom (Duff & Maley 1990: 3), literature as a component of the English language teaching programme in secondary schools in Cameroon "remains the exception rather than the rule" (Macalister 2008: 248). This paper seeks to examine the impact of the withdrawal of English Literature from the English as a foreign language curriculum of French-speaking Cameroonians. In the article, we statistically compare the performances of French-speaking and English-speaking Cameroonian teacher trainees of the department of Bilingual Studies of the Higher Teachers’ Training College of the University of Maroua in English Literature and in French Literature. We also discuss the importance and effectiveness of the different models and approaches in the development of the cultural competence and communicative skills of learners. The results obtained reveal that the studying of literatures in French by Anglophones at the Advanced Level positively influences their performances in French in Higher Education. The poor performances of Francophone Student-teachers in courses like LBL 11 (Introduction to English Literature) are attributable to the fact that they do not study literatures in English at the secondary school level.
Immortalized dendritic cell line fully competent in antigen presentation initiates primary T cell responses in vivo

Dendritic cells (DC) can provide all the known costimulatory signals required for activation of unprimed T cells and are the most efficient and perhaps the critical antigen presenting cells in the induction of primary T cell-mediated immune responses. It is now shown that mouse cell lines with many of the features of DC can be generated using the MIB phi 2-N11 retroviral vector transducing a novel envAKR-mycMH2 fusion gene. The immortalized dendritic cell line (CB1) displays most of the morphologic, immunophenotypic, and functional attributes of DC, including constitutive expression of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II molecules, costimulatory molecules B7/BB1, heat stable antigen, intracellular adhesion molecule 1, and efficient antigen- presenting ability. Granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) proved to be effective in increasing MHC class II molecule expression and in enhancing presentation of native protein antigens. In comparison with macrophages, CB1 dendritic cells did not exhibit phagocytic and chemotactic activity in response to various stimuli and lipopolysaccharide activation was ineffective in inducing tumor necrosis factor alpha or interleukin 1 beta production. CB1 cells, pulsed with haptens in vitro and injected into naive mice were able to induce delayed-type hypersensitivity responses, further increased with pretreatment with GM-CSF, indicating that these cells may represent an immature, rather than a mature DC. The ability of CB1 to prime T cells in vivo could provide a tool to design novel immunization strategies.
Depression and somatic symptoms in the elderly: the role of cognitive function

This research was developed within a study on the quality of life of elderly people and involved 462 community‐dwelling subjects aged 75 and over living in the city centre of Brescia and Padua, northern Italy. The presence of the well‐known relationship between depression and somatic complaints was confirmed in the sample. In order to assess the role of physical conditions and cognitive impairment, the association between depression and number of pains was statistically controlled for the presence of disability (and other indicators of disease) and for cognitive function. Results indicate a correlation between the number of pains reported and the BSI depression scale score for cognitively intact individuals. The correlation was abolished in those individuals whose cognitive functioning was impaired. The relationships of cognitive function with depression and somatic complaints are discussed.
1 TH / 8-2 Conservative Global Gyrokinetic Toroidal Full-f 5 D Vlasov Simulation

A new global gyrokinetic toroidal full-f five dimensional (5D) Vlasov simulation (GT5D) [1] is developed using a novel non-dissipative conservative finite difference scheme (NDCFD) [2], which guarantees numerical stability by satisfying relevant conservation properties of the modern gyrokinetic theory. By using GT5D, robust and accurate long time simulations of tokamak micro-turbulence are enabled for the first time based on a full-f approach with self-consistent evolutions of equilibrium profiles balanced with sources. GT5D is verified through comparisons of zonal flow damping tests, and linear and nonlinear analyses of ion temperature gradient driven (ITG) modes against a global gyrokinetic toroidal δf particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation (GT3D) [3]. The neoclassical physics is implemented using the linear Fokker-Planck (FP) collision operator, and the equilibrium radial electric field Er is determined self-consistently. In a normal shear tokamak, source driven ITG turbulence simulations are performed using sources which fix power input near the axis and the ion temperature Ti at the edge, respectively, and profile evolutions are traced over a collision time. It is found that a significant part of the haet flux is carried by avalanches in source free regions, where stiff Ti profiles are sustained with globally constant Lti at slightly above the critical value. In this region, the equilibrium Er becomes significantly larger than the neoclassical level, and its shear strongly affects the directions of the avalanche propagation and the momentum flux. A non-diffusive momentum flux due to the Er shear is observed and non-zero (intrinsic) toroidal rotation is sustained without momentum input near the axis.
Analysing Semantic Flow in Academic Writing

Many approaches have been proposed for providing feedback in academic writing, however, few of them are visually based. We describe a novel visualisation method for providing feedback to support formative essay assessment. The visualisation method makes use of text mining techniques to provide insight on the semantics of the topics in an essay. We propose that visualisation can be used to mitigate many of the problems associated with the subjectivity of formative essay assessment. The visualisation method involves a process of non-negative matrix factorisation (NMF), to uncover topics in an essay, followed by multidimensional scaling, to map the essay topics to a 2-dimensional representation. We evaluate our approach with a subset of the British Academic Written English corpus of 2761 assignments written by university students.
Variation tolerance and error resilience in a low power wireless receiver

Power consumption of digital baseband processing of a wireless receiver can be reduced by operating the circuits at a reduced voltage where setup timing errors occur occasionally in a controlled way. One of the challenges is then to estimate the BER of the receiver and to create a control loop that controls the voltage such that the estimated BER is within the specifications of the system. The paper describes two mechanisms to realize such a control loop. The first one uses parity-based error detection; the second one is based on the application of forward error correction in the system. Both mechanisms have been modeled in an industrial low power receiver design that includes a model for setup timing error injection. Simulation results show that the control loops are able to accurately control the voltage to the lowest possible level such that the BER stays within the specified constraints.
An assessment of teaching economics with The Simpsons

This paper aims to quantify the effectiveness of teaching economics with video exemplars, mainly the US TV show The Simpsons. We regress students' exam scores on their performance on Simpsons and non-Simpsons pop quizzes. After controlling for students' quality difference and exam content, our results indicate that the performance of Simpsons' pop quizzes has a greater impact on student learning, particularly for grade C, D and F students.
Two Knives Cut Better Than One: Chinese Word Segmentation with Dual Decomposition

There are two dominant approaches to Chinese word segmentation: word-based and character-based models, each with respective strengths. Prior work has shown that gains in segmentation performance can be achieved from combining these two types of models; however, past efforts have not provided a practical technique to allow mainstream adoption. We propose a method that effectively combines the strength of both segmentation schemes using an efficient dual-decomposition algorithm for joint inference. Our method is simple and easy to implement. Experiments on SIGHAN 2003 and 2005 evaluation datasets show that our method achieves the best reported results to date on 6 out of 7 datasets.
Sex offenders in denial: a study into a group of forensic psychologists' attitudes regarding the corresponding impact upon risk assessment calculations and parole eligibility

A considerable proportion of convicted sex offenders maintain a stance of innocence and thus do not engage in recommended treatment programmes. As a result, such offenders are often deemed to have outstanding criminogenic needs which may negatively impact upon risk assessment procedures and parole eligibility. This paper reports on a study that aimed to investigate a group of forensic psychologists' attitudes regarding the impact of denial on risk assessment ratings as well as parole eligibility. Participants completed a confidential open-ended questionnaire. Analysis indicated that considerable variability exists among forensic psychologists in regards to their beliefs about the origins of denial and what impact such denial should have on post-prison release eligibility. In contrast, there was less disparity regarding beliefs about the percentage of innocent yet incarcerated sex offenders. This paper also reviews current understanding regarding the impact of denial on recidivism as well as upon general forensic assessments.
Nonlinear Dependence in the Discovery of Differentially Expressed Genes

Microarray data are used to determine which genes are active in response to a changing cell environment. Genes are “discovered” when they are significantly differentially expressed in the microarray data collected under the differing conditions. In one prevalent approach, all genes are assumed to satisfy a null hypothesis, ℍ 0, of no difference in expression. A false discovery (type 1 error) occurs when ℍ 0 is incorrectly rejected. The quality of a detection algorithm is assessed by estimating its number of false discoveries, 𝔉. Work involving the second-moment modeling of the z-value histogram (representing gene expression differentials) has shown significantly deleterious effects of intergene expression correlation on the estimate of 𝔉. This paper suggests that nonlinear dependencies could likewise be important. With an applied emphasis, this paper extends the “moment framework” by including third-moment skewness corrections in an estimator of 𝔉. This estimator combines observed correlation (corrected for sampling fluctuations) with the information from easily identifiable null cases. Nonlinear-dependence modeling reduces the estimation error relative to that of linear estimation. Third-moment calculations involve empirical densities of 3 × 3 covariance matrices estimated using very few samples. The principle of entropy maximization is employed to connect estimated moments to 𝔉 inference. Model results are tested with BRCA and HIV data sets and with carefully constructed simulations.
Off-line Robustification of Model Predictive Control for Uncertain Multivariable Systems

Abstract This paper proposes an off-line state-space control methodology for enhancing the robustness of multivariable Model Predictive Control (MPC) through the convex optimization of the Youla parameter. The Youla parameter-based optimization strategy allows convex specifications in closed-loop representation, focusing on the robustification of an initial controller using LMIs (Linear Matrix Inequalities) techniques. It is well established that such kind of robustification improves among others robustness towards unstructured uncertainties, however modifying the robustness of the initial controller towards system polytopic uncertainties. On the other hand, these polytopic uncertainties are not straightforward to deal with, imposing non-convex specifications in the Youla parameter. To overcome these difficulties, a novel structure is presented, including an additional convex condition on the Youla parameter to preserve robustness of the initial controller towards system polytopic uncertainties while managing the compromise with robust stability under unstructured uncertainties for the nominal controlled system. The potential of the developed robustified multivariable MPC controller is further illustrated in simulation on a stirred tank reactor.
Dynamic inverse problem in a weakly laterally inhomogeneous medium

An inverse problem of wave propagation into a weakly laterally inhomogeneous medium occupying a half-space is considered in the acoustic approximation. The half-space consists of an upper layer and a semi-infinite bottom separated with an interface. An assumption of a weak lateral inhomogeneity means that the velocity of wave propagation and the shape of the interface depend weakly on the horizontal coordinates, $x=(x_1,x_2)$, in comparison with the strong dependence on the vertical coordinate, $z$, giving rise to a small parameter $\e <<1$. Expanding the velocity in power series with respect to $\e$, we obtain a recurrent system of 1D inverse problems. We provide algorithms to solve these problems for the zero and first-order approximations. In the zero-order approximation, the corresponding 1D inverse problem is reduced to a system of non-linear Volterra-type integral equations. In the first-order approximation, the corresponding 1D inverse problem is reduced to a system of coupled linear Volterra integral equations. These equations are used for the numerical reconstruction of the velocity in both layers and the interface up to $O(\e^2)$.
Collision Detection between Geometric Models: A Survey

In this paper, we survey the state of the art in collision detection between general geometric models. The set of models include polygonal objects, spline or algebraic surfaces, CSG models, and deformable bodies. We present a number of techniques and systems available for contact determination. We also describe several N-body algorithms to reduce the number of pairwise intersection tests.
Folk high schools and dropouts from upper secondary school: effects of non-academic investments in dropouts

High dropout rates from upper secondary school are related to substantial societal costs, and are hence a major policy concern. The Norwegian folk high schools provide a non-academic education in an intimate and nurturing environment where interpersonal and social skills are emphasised, and where individuals grow in sense of self-esteem and sense of coping. The unique non-academic nature of folk high schools allows us to explore if non-academic investments in youth could be effective tools in the battle against dropout. We have obtained access to high-quality Norwegian administrative data and use both a covariate adjustment technique and an instrumental variable technique to investigate whether a folk high school education raises the probability of dropouts completing upper secondary school. We find that dropouts are significantly more likely to complete an academic course if they have attended a folk high school. However, a folk high school education makes dropouts less likely to complete a vocational course. The non-academic education has the surprising tendency of redirecting vocational students to academic paths.
Redox‐Flow Batteries: From Metals to Organic Redox‐Active Materials

Abstract Research on redox‐flow batteries (RFBs) is currently experiencing a significant upturn, stimulated by the growing need to store increasing quantities of sustainably generated electrical energy. RFBs are promising candidates for the creation of smart grids, particularly when combined with photovoltaics and wind farms. To achieve the goal of “green”, safe, and cost‐efficient energy storage, research has shifted from metal‐based materials to organic active materials in recent years. This Review presents an overview of various flow‐battery systems. Relevant studies concerning their history are discussed as well as their development over the last few years from the classical inorganic, to organic/inorganic, to RFBs with organic redox‐active cathode and anode materials. Available technologies are analyzed in terms of their technical, economic, and environmental aspects; the advantages and limitations of these systems are also discussed. Further technological challenges and prospective research possibilities are highlighted.
Continuous Performance Test Results of Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Although Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is well established as a diagnosis in childhood, the diagnosis in adults remains controversial. The present study compared the Continuous Performance Test (CPT) performance of 60 clinic-referred adults with current ADHD symptomatology to normal subjects. Adults with current ADHD symptoms were found to make more errors of omission and commission than did normal adults. The signal detection theory variable, d', indicated that patients with ADHD were less sensitive to stimulus features than were normals. Using several CPT measures to predict group status, the CPT appeared to be of moderate clinical utility. These CPT results lend convergent validity to similar results in child populations and help to establish ADHD as a valid disorder of adulthood.