Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Australia Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics the Decline in Income Growth Volatility in the United States: Evidence from Regional Data the Decline in Income Growth Volatility in the United States: Evidence from Regional Data *

We use US regional and state data to determine which regions have contributed most to the apparent decline in income growth volatility in the United States. We study changes in the variance of income growth in each region, changes in the covariance of growth between regions and changes in regional income growth shares. We establish that there has been a significant decline in the income growth volatility in thirty eight US states, and it is this, rather than changes in income shares, that is mostly responsible for the decline in the aggregate growth volatility. Further, we find that the twelve states that show no significant decline in their income growth volatility , are states with policies that make them unattractive to new businesses. We suggest that state level industrial policy may be a good, albeit partial, explanation for the decline in income growth volatility of the United States. for providing an excellent environment for visiting scholars, and we give special thanks to Gordon Hanson for introducing us to the literature on business location decisions. The usual disclaimer applies.
Hydrolase Regulates NAD+ Metabolites and Modulates Cellular Redox

Although the classical redox functions of co-enzyme NAD+ are firmly established in metabolism, there are numerous enzymes that catalyze cleavage of NAD+ to yield free ADP-ribose (ADPr) or related metabolites, whose functions remain largely unknown. Here we show that the Nudix (nucleoside diphosphate linked to another moiety X) hydrolase Ysa1 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a major regulator of cellular ADPr and O-acetyl-ADP-ribose (OAADPr). OAADPr is the direct product of NAD+-dependent protein deacetylases (sirtuins) and is readily converted to ADPr. Ysa1 cleaves ADPr/OAADPr into ribose phosphate/acetyl-ribose phosphate and AMP. In cells lacking Ysa1 (Δysa1), ADPr and OAADPr levels increased ∼50%, with a corresponding decrease in AMP. Strikingly, Δysa1 cells display higher resistance to exogenous reactive oxygen species (ROS) and 40% lower basal levels of endogenous ROS, compared with wild type. The biochemical basis for these differences in ROS-related phenotypes was investigated, and the results provide evidence that increased ADPr/OAADPr levels protect cells via the following two pathways: (i) lower ROS production through inhibition of complex I of the mitochondrial electron transport chain, and (ii) generation of higher levels of NADPH to suppress ROS damage. The latter occurs through diverting glucose into the pentose phosphate pathway by ADPr inhibition of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, a central enzyme of glycolysis.
Perceived parent–child communication and well-being among Ethiopian adolescents

Abstract This study examines the relationship between perceived parent–child communication and four children well-being measures (depression, self-esteem, substance use and school adjustment). The participants consisted of 809 adolescents, mostly male (52.9%), and had a mean age of 16.8 years (SD = 1.58). The children completed a battery of instruments that measured perceived communication, depression symptoms, school adjustment problems, substance use and self-esteem. Correlations, regression and t-tests were used to address the objectives of the study. We found that female participants perceived the nature of communication with both parents as more open than boys did. We also found significant associations between children’s perception of communication with both parents and their subjective well-being. Findings of this study point to the importance of open parent–child communication to adolescents’ well-being.
Reducing Complexity of Interaction with Advanced Bathroom Lighting at Home (Reduktion der Interaktionskomplexität bei hochentwickelten Badezimmerbeleuchtungssystemen für die Heimanwendung)

Summary Developments in lighting technology provide a wide range of new opportunities for domestic use which have been demonstrated in several interior design projects. At the same time, available user interfaces providing full control over these systems are too cumbersome to use and are not acceptable for the majority of consumers. To reduce this complexity, we aimed at creating an intuitive user interface control for advanced multi-source lighting systems. Based on participatory design techniques, we invited end-users to help us design and evaluate the new interaction concept. In the final evaluation the user interface design was rated highly with regard to its perceived usefulness and “ease of use”. New designs for ad-vanced lighting systems should aim at user-friendly interfaces that make the transition from ordinary light switches to these new interfaces as simple and natural as possible.
A COMPARITIVE STUDY OF DIFFERENT DATA MINING CLASSIFICATION TECHNIQUES FOR CANCER MOLECULAR PATTERN DISCOVERY

The most important application of Microarray for gene expression analysis is used to discover or classify the unknown tissue samples with the help of known tissue samples. Several general purpose Data Mining Classification Techniques have been proposed recently and studied to predict/identify the cancer patterns. In this research work, we have focused and studied a few Classification Techniques such as Support Vector Machine (SVM), Nearest Neighbor Classifier (k-NN), ICS4, Non-Parallel Plane Proximal Classifier (NPPC), NPPC-SVM, Margin-based Feature Elimination-SVM (MFE-SVM). The performance of these classifiers in terms of Minimum Threshold Level to predict/identify the Cancer Pattern, Execution Time, Training Time, Memory Usage and Memory Utilization have been analyzed. This research work has applied these Classification Techniques to 10 publicly available datasets, and compared how these Classification Techniques performed in class prediction of test datasets. From our experimental study, it is observed that for different Cancer Patterns, the threshold levels are different to predict the Cancer Pattern by various Classifiers. It is also revealed that the execution time to predict the cancer patterns are different for different Classifiers. That is overall this work has revealed that although it is obvious that Threshold level based Selection method improves both the memory utilization and execution time but finding the best Classifier for Cancer Prediction is still complicated and the performance and efficiency of Classifier in terms of Execution Time and Memory Utilization is vary in each case.
Maximally Selected Chi‐square Statistics for Ordinal Variables

The association between a binary variable Y and a variable X having an at least ordinal measurement scale might be examined by selecting a cutpoint in the range of X and then performing an association test for the obtained 2 × 2 contingency table using the chi‐square statistic. The distribution of the maximally selected chi‐square statistic (i.e. the maximal chi‐square statistic over all possible cutpoints) under the null‐hypothesis of no association between X and Y is different from the known chi‐square distribution. In the last decades, this topic has been extensively studied for continuous X variables, but not for non‐continuous variables of at least ordinal measurement scale (which include e.g. classical ordinal or discretized continuous variables). In this paper, we suggest an exact method to determine the finite‐sample distribution of maximally selected chi‐square statistics in this context. This novel approach can be seen as a method to measure the association between a binary variable and variables having an at least ordinal scale of different types (ordinal, discretized continuous, etc). As an illustration, this method is applied to a new data set describing pregnancy and birth for 811 babies. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)
Automatic Camera Path Generation for Graph Navigation in 3D

This paper addresses the Focus+Context issues involved in navigating very large graphs in 3D Euclidean space. The main aim of the approach presented in this material is to preserve and perhaps enhance the user mental map during the transition phase from one focus object to the other. This approach, NavAssist, accomplishes this task by filling the users view port with the maximum amount of information without compromising user orientation. A simplified 3D view point path-generating technique is presented that reveals the largest number of graph components during 3D space navigation.
Application of Biped Humanoid Robot to Motion Simulation for Elderly and Disabled People

the goal of this study is to realize a biped humanoid robot as a human motion simulator; where a biped humanoid robot having an ability to mimic various human motions is used for testing welfare apparatuses. In this paper, a humanoid robot, WABIAN-2R, capable of not only human-like walking but also the emulation of disabled persons’ walking is proposed. It has two 6-DOF legs, two 1-passive-DOF feet, a 2-DOF pelvis, a 2-DOF trunk, two 7-DOF arms with 3-DOF hands, and a 3-DOF neck. In addition, an algorithm for generating walking patterns for emulations of disabled persons’ gaits for each case of disabilities based on the ZMP criterion is described. Finally, authors report a walking experiment with a walk-assist machine and an emulation of hemiplegic gait to verify the availability of the human motion simulator.
MOND and the lensing fundamental plane: no need for dark matter on galaxy scales

Bolton et al. have derived a mass-based fundamental plane using photometric and spectroscopic observations of 36 strong gravitational lenses. The lensing allows a direct determination of the mass-surface density and so avoids the usual dependence on mass-to-light ratio. We consider this same sample in the context of Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) and demonstrate that the observed mass-based fundamental plane coincides with the MOND fundamental plane determined previously for a set of polytropic spheres chosen to match the observed range of effective radii and velocity dispersions in elliptical galaxies. Moreover, the observed projected mass within one-half of an effective radius is consistent with the mass in visible stars plus a small additional component of ‘phantom dark matter’ resulting from the MOND contribution to photon deflection.
Visual-vestibular integration in self-motion heading discrimination with weak vestibular cues (≤30mg, 0.2 and 0.5 Hz)

Heading Discrimination Threshold (HDT) can quantify human’s ability to discriminate selfmotion heading directions in the presence of visual cue, vestibular cue or combined visualvestibular cues. HDT has been the subject of many studies (e.g. Gu et al. 2008; Fetsch et al. 2009). A Bayesian model had been developed for modelling an optimal visual-vestibular integration process. It could predict a theoretical minimum combined HDTs as functions of visual and vestibular HDTs but suffered a prediction bias. A review of literature indicates that visual-vestibular heading integration has not been studied when vestibular stimuli are weak (peak acceleration of vestibular stimuli < 30 mg, 0.2 and 0.5 Hz) (Gap 1). Weak vestibular stimuli are common to passengers or drivers traveling at constant velocities. More importantly, studies of HDT under weak vestibular cues can test hypotheses related to the possible cause of prediction bias (Section 2.4). Little is known about the possible source of prediction bias (Gap 2). The previous Bayesian model assumed that the distribution of perceived heading directions follows a normal distribution. But actually, the perceived heading distribution involves circular co-ordinates and an angular normal distribution (e.g., von Mises distribution) may be a better choice but has not been studied (Gap 3). In this research, a new optimal visual-vestibular integration model with von Mises distribution assumption is proposed. In order to fill Gap1, Experiment 1 was conducted to examine the full factorial combinations of near-threshold vestibular stimuli (0, 9, 14 and 19 mg) with and without visual stimuli. Results indicated that the near-threshold vestibular stimulus was a disturbance factor rather than a contributing factor in visual-vestibular integration ( combined HDTs > visual HDTs / new model prediction, p<0.05). A similar disturbance effect of vestibular stimuli has been reported in neuroscience research (Deutschländer et al. 2002) but has not been considered in visual-vestibular heading integration research. It was hypothesized that if the visual HDTs were corrected with the disturbance effect, the previously reported prediction bias of Bayesian model could be reduced. This hypothesis could not be tested with Experiment 1 data because
Search Engine Adaptation by Feedback Control Adjustment for Time-sensitive Query

We propose a new method to rank a special category of time-sensitive queries that are year qualified. The method adjusts the retrieval scores of a base ranking function according to time-stamps of web documents so that the freshest documents are ranked higher. Our method, which is based on feedback control theory, uses ranking errors to adjust the search engine behavior. For this purpose, we use a simple but effective method to extract year qualified queries by mining query logs and a time-stamp recognition method that considers titles and urls of web documents. Our method was tested on a commercial search engine. The experiments show that our approach can significantly improve relevance ranking for year qualified queries even if all the existing methods for comparison failed.
Exploring Guide Context in City Scenario Using Color and Gradient Features

Guide signs provide us with a remarkable amount of information about our surroundings and enables us to in- teract efficiently with the environment. In this paper, guidance system in a difined city scenario are explored in the image domain employing both color and gradient features. Specifically, color impression is exploited statistically based on a color difference model fusing human visual sensation and psychological perception of the designers and the guide-users. Furthermore, a gradient feature followed by a dimensionality reduction process is proposed for the deep feature extraction of signs. Our two sign features are complimentary, also of great potential for both designers and users to accomplish inter- action with environment efficiently. Experiments are illustrated and the results validate our approach.
An effective direction estimation algorithm in multipath environment based on fourth-order cyclic cumulants

In order to improve the direction estimation performance of noise-suppression and signal-selectivity in multipath environment of mobile communications, we develop a novel multipath direction finding algorithm by exploiting higher order cyclostationarity of communication signals. Firstly, the fourth-order cyclic cumulant matrices of the received signals are constructed and the generalized steering vector is estimated based on EVESPA algorithm, then forward-backward linear prediction (FBLP) method with subarrays is used to resolve the DOAs of each group of coherent signals of interest (SOIs), which can improve resolution of closely spaced coherent signals in small data length. Part of the array can be arbitrary, and unlike EVESPA algorithm, the total number of signals (SOIs and interferences) impinged on the array can be more than 2K(K-1)/3 with K-sensor uniform linear subarray and a maximum of 2K(K-1)/3 coherent SOIs can be resolved. The simulations show the advantages of the proposed method compared with EVESPA algorithm.
Are Platyhelminthes Coelomates without a Coelom? An Argument Based on the Evolution of Hox Genes'

SYNOPSIS. TWO fundamentally opposed theories have been proposed to account for the origin of the body plan of the flatworms. Each theory relates to a different concept of the evolution of the early metazoans. For the defenders of the classical planuloid/acoeloid theory, the simple organization of the flatworms is reminiscent of an hypothetical acoelomate worm-like ancestor of all bilaterians. Flatworms therefore emerge very early in the bilaterian tree before the appearance of the coelomate organisms. For the proponents of the more disputed archecoelomate theory, all the bilaterians are descendants of a primitively coelomate ancestor. Flatworms would have lost the coelom secondarily. Since their acoelomate condition is no longer indicative of a primitive origin, most of their characters put them in the protostomes, with the spiralian phyla. These competing theories about the position of flatworms in the metazoan phylogenetic tree can now be tested with molecular markers. This article reviews the arguments from 18S rDNA and Hox gene evolution. There is convergence between these data in favor of a late emergence of at least the rhabditophoran platyhelminths. Planarian Hox genes show more similarities with the Hox genes of annelids. On this basis, flatworms can be convincingly grouped with the spiralian coelomate protostomes. This position suggests the ancestors of flatworms lost both the anus and the coelom. Progenesis has been proposed as a possible mechanism by which these losses have occurred. This hypothesis is re-examined in the light of the affinity of the flatworms with other spiralian phyla.
Distributed virtual-movement scheme for improving energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, controlled mobility is used in a novel fashion in order to achieve the best placement for prolonging the lifetime and for maximizing the energy efficiency of the wireless sensor network. Basically, a new source of energy consumption is introduced when the mobility of nodes is exploited. We design a new mechanism for the nodes, which, by virtualizing the movement phase, makes nodes reach the best placement and, at the same time, it counterbalances the effects of energy wasting caused by the movement. We validated the results by extensive simulation campaigns where different network parameters vary. In all the cases, the performance of the network, in terms of lifetime and energy efficiency, has been found fairly superior to the schemes existing in literature.
Conduction Slowing in Diabetic Sensorimotor Polyneuropathy

OBJECTIVE Mild demyelination may contribute more to the pathophysiology of nerve fiber injury in diabetic sensorimotor polyneuropathy (DSP) than previously thought. We investigated the clinical and electrodiagnostic classifications of nerve injury in diabetic patients to detect evidence of conduction slowing in DSP. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Type 1 diabetic subjects (n = 62) and type 2 diabetic subjects (n = 111) with a broad spectrum of DSP underwent clinical examination and nerve conduction studies (NCS). Patients were classified as having axonal (group A), conduction slowing (group D), or combined (group C) DSP based on electrodiagnostic criteria. Patients with chronic immune-mediated neuropathies were not included. The groups were compared using ANOVA, contingency tables, and Kruskal-Wallis analyses. RESULTS Of the 173 type 1 and type 2 diabetic subjects with a mean age of 59.1 ± 13.6 years and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) of 8.0 ± 1.8% (64 ± 19.7 mmol/mol), 46% were in group A, 32% were in group D, and 22% were in group C. The severity of DSP increased across groups A, D, and C, respectively, based on clinical and NCS parameters. The mean HbA1c for group D subjects (8.9 ± 2.3% [74 ± 25.1 mmol/mol]) was higher than for group A and group C subjects (7.7 ± 1.4% [61 ± 15.3 mmol/mol] and 7.5 ± 1.3% [58 ± 14.2 mmol/mol]; P = 0.003), and this difference was observed in those with type 1 diabetes. CONCLUSIONS The presence of conduction slowing in patients with suboptimally controlled type 1 diabetes indicates the possibility that this stage of DSP may be amenable to intervention via improved glycemic control.
Challenges of interprofessional collaboration in Iranian mental health services: A qualitative investigation

Background: Nurses and other members of health care team provide mental patients with health services through interprofessional collaboration which is a main strategy to improve health services. Nevertheless, many difficulties are evidently influencing interprofessional collaboration in Iranian context. This paper presented the results of a study aimed to explore the context. Materials and Methods: A qualitative study was conducted using in-depth interviews to collect data from 20 health professionals and 4 clients or their family members who were selected purposefully from the health centers affiliated with Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. Themes were identified using latent qualitative content analysis. Trustworthiness of the study was supported considering auditability, neutrality, consistency and transferability. The study lasted from 2010 to 2011. Findings: Some important challenges were identified as protecting professional territory, medical oriented approach and teamwork deficits. They were all under a main theme emphasizing professionals’ divergent views. It could shed insight into underlying causes of collaboration gaps among nurses and other health professionals. Conclusions: The three introduced themes implied difficulties mainly related to divergences among health professionals. Moreover, the difficulties revealed the need for training chiefly to improve their convergent shared views and approaches. Therefore, it is worthwhile to suggest interprofessional education for nurses and other professionals with special attention to improving interpersonal skills as well as mental health need-based services.
A Semiphysical Microwave Surface Emission Model for Soil Moisture Retrieval

This study proposes a microwave surface emission model for soil moisture retrieval using radiometer data based on today's most widely used physical model, i.e., advanced integral equation model (AIEM). Soil roughness and moisture effects are easily yet accurately decoupled in the proposed model. In the field case study, the total least squares method, instead of the least squares (LS) method, is applied for the first time in soil moisture retrieval to solve the error in variable linear equation set to further reduce the estimation error. Validated by the Soil Moisture Experiment 2003 campaign data in Oklahoma, the root mean square error (RMSE) and R2 of volumetric soil moisture varies from 1.5% to 4.2% and 0.92 to 0.43 at L/C/X bands and 40/55° incidence angles. Compared with previous studies, the proposed model has several new features: 1) it is location independent since the model is derived through reproducing the behavior of the AIEM; 2) its high fidelity to AIEM significantly improves the accuracy, whereas its linearity makes it easy to invert; and 3) the soil moisture retrieval based on the proposed model requires no prior knowledge of soil roughness in the scenario of the demonstrated case study. The L-band/V-polarization radiometer data yield the best retrieval result with an RMSE of 1.5% and R2 of 0.92, whereas increasing frequency increases the error because the sensitivity of emissivity to ground soil moisture decreases, and the valid roughness region, i.e., khRMS <; 3, of the AIEM narrows. Furthermore, the model can be readily extended to broader regions than the investigated case study on field scale in this paper by nesting the model in the τ - ω model and using satellite data from SMOS or SMAP.