Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Survival During Renal Replacement Therapy for Diabetic End-Stage Renal Disease in Pima Indians

OBJECTIVE To examine survival in Pima Indians receiving renal replacement therapy for end-stage renal disease attributed to NIDDM. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Vital status through 1994 was determined for 136 diabetic Pima Indians from the Gila River Indian Community who began renal replacement therapy between 1973 and 1990. RESULTS Median survival from the onset of renal replacement therapy was 39 months (95% CI, 31–54), 31 months (95% CI, 11–48) in those who began treatment between 1973 and 1981, and 44 months (95% CI, 32–56) in those who began treatment between 1982 and 1990 (P = 0.020). During these periods, mean age at onset of treatment increased from 53.3 to 56.1 years (P = 0.166), and mean duration of diabetes at the onset of treatment increased from 16.5 to 20.2 years (P = 0.003). After adjustment for sex, duration of diabetes, initial dialysis type, and kidney transplantation by an age-stratified proportional-hazards analysis, the death rate after starting renal replacement therapy in the second half of the study was 0.54 times (95% CI, 0.33–0.88) that in the first half. If this analysis was restricted to those who survived at least 90 days of therapy, the difference between the time periods was diminished (death rate ratio = 0.76; 95% CI, 0.43–1.32). CONCLUSIONS Survival in Pima Indians receiving renal replacement therapy improved significantly over the study despite an increase in the average age and diabetes duration of those beginning dialysis. Much of the improvement in survival is attributable to a reduction in the number of deaths within the first 90 days of therapy. The median survival of 47 months in Pima Indians < 65 years old at the initiation of therapy is substantially longer than the 30 months reported in blacks and 16 months reported in whites of similar age with NIDDM.
Novel Error Detection Algorithm for LZSS Compressed Data

Conventional error detection schemes, such as the repetition code, parity bit, and Hamming code, have been used to detect bit errors in data. These conventional schemes require the insertion of additional bits to detect bit errors, but the code rate decreases in proportion to the number of additional bits. In order to avoid this problem, in this paper, we introduce three special bit patterns in Lempel-Ziv–Storer-Szymanski (LZSS) compressed data. In addition, based on the three bit patterns, we propose a novel error detection algorithm for LZSS compressed data, which does not need to use additional bits to detect bit errors. In the simulation, it is demonstrated that the compression ratio and running time of the proposed algorithm are better than those of the conventional schemes, such as repetition code, parity bit, and Hamming code. In addition, it is shown that when more than/equal to seven bit errors occur, the proposed algorithm nearly always detects the presence of errors in the LZSS compressed data.
Multi-Generations Assessment of Dietary Nucleotides Consumption in Maternal Rats

This study investigated multi-generational reproductive and developmental toxicity of dietary nucleotides (NTs) during lactation in rats with the purpose of augmenting currently available safety data. Weanling rats (F0) were fed NTs at doses of 0.01%, 0.04%, 0.16%, 0.64%, and 1.28% (wt/wt for 90 days and then mated in a 1:1 pattern. The F1 generation rats were fed NTs for 90 days after weaning. The process was repeated until F3 rats were born. We measured the physical and neural development landmarks during lactation in the F3 generation and observed the signs of maternal rats during the gestation, parturition, and lactation periods. No significant differences in either physical or neural developmental landmarks were observed between the control and NT groups. No clinically adverse effects were found in the maternal rats at any point in gestation, parturition, or lactation. There were no alterations in the indicators of parturition. No significant differences were observed between controls and NT-treated rats fed four kinds of nucleotides in F0 milk on PND 21. In conclusion, NTs in doses of up to 1.28% did not cause any adverse effects in either the maternal or filial individuals.
An analytical review of Pakistan's educational policies and plans

After more than a half century of independence, nearly half of Pakistan's population is still illiterate. There are various factors responsible for this sorry state of affairs. In this context, this paper attempts to analyze the situation of national educational policies and plans. The overall outcome of this discussion reflects that poorly produced and inadequate implementation of education policies and plans were major hurdles in the development of the education sector in Pakistan. The analysis also highlights that throughout the history of this country, new policies and plans were often prepared without giving due consideration to the causes of failure of previous policies and plans. The practice of extending the time period for the unmet targets of previous policies can also be seen on a number of occasions in the history of Pakistan. This situation highlights the need for the formulation of rational policies and plans as well as an adequate system for their implementation. In conclusion, the paper suggests some measures for improvement.
SOME DATA BASED MODELS FOR ANALYZING SALES FLUCTUATIONS

The models developed in this paper can be used to study period to period fluctuations in sales. They allow for a heterogenious population of consumers; that is, frequent and infrequent buyers and for one package and multiple package buyers. The data needed for the models are readily available from many sources, particularly consumer panel data. Methods for estimating parameters and detailed numerical examples are given. These models allow a manager to answer the following question: “Which type(s) of consumer is most responsible for the fluctuations in my total sales volume. ” Some new results in Bayesian inference are also developed.
Purposive Diversification of R and D in Manufacturing

R&D diversification in large U.S. manufacturing firms is found to be purposive, exploiting complementarities of research activities and forming groups of related industry categories. Purposively divers ified firms behave differently from randomly diversified or undiversi fied firms. The behavioral differences result because the purposively diversified firms allocate relatively more R&D funds to industry cat egories where appropriation of the returns from R&D is relatively eas y. R&D expenditure and productivity are more closely linked at the gr oup level than at the industry-category level, suggesting spillovers across industry categories are important. Copyright 1987 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Inflammatory Markers in Adults with Prader-Willi Syndrome before and during 12 Months Growth Hormone Treatment

Background: In Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) obesity and partial growth hormone (GH) deficiency are frequently observed. The risks of cardiovascular diseases and early death are increased. We examined inflammatory markers in adult PWS, before and during 12 months of GH treatment. Method: Twelve PWS adults, median age 23.5 years (17–37) and median BMI 33.8 kg/m2 (21.2–50.4), participated. Serum interleukin-6, tumour necrosis factor α, high sensitive protein C-reactive protein (HCRP), cholesterol, triglycerides, leptin, adiponectin, glucose, insulin, insulin-like growth factor I and body composition were measured at baseline and after 6 and 12 months of GH treatment. Results: Median and range at baseline for interleukin-6 was 9.87 ng/l (1.76–10.72), for tumour necrosis factor α 2.39 ng/l (1.00–3.26) and for HCRP 7.64 mg/l (0.41–41.1) (normal values < 5 ng/l, < 8 ng/l and<5 mg/l, respectively). At baseline correlations between inflammatory markers and age, anthropometry, body composition and the metabolic parameters were non-significant; only positive associations were found between tumour necrosis factor α and body weight (r = 0.617, p = 0.033) and between HCRP and BMI (r = 0.594, p = 0.041). GH treatment non-significantly decreased the levels of the inflammatory markers. Conclusion: In this pilot study, levels of interleukin-6 and HCRP were increased, and GH intervention did not significantly reduce the levels. Chronic inflammation might contribute to the increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in PWS.
The Effect of Dispersed MWCNTs Using SDBS Surfactant on Bacterial Growth

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are attractive because of their excellent chemical durability mechanical strength and electrical properties. Therefore there is interest in CNTs for not only electrical and mechanical application, but also biological and medical application. In this study, the dispersion power of surfactant-treated multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and their effect on the antibacterial activity were examined. Surfactant was used sodium dodecyl-benzenesulfonate (SDBS). UV-vis absorbance and transmission electron microscopy(TEM) were used to characterize the dispersion of MWCNTs in the aqueous phase, showing that the surfactant molecules had been adsorbed onto the MWCNTs surface. The surfactant-treated MWCNTs exhibited antimicrobial activities to streptococcus mutans. The optical density growth curves and viable cell number determined by the plating method suggested that the antimicrobial activity of surfactant-treated MWCNTs was both concentration and treatment time-dependent. Keywords—MWCNT, SDBS, surfactant, antibacterial.
Fine-Grained Test Minimization

As a software system evolves, its test suite can accumulate redundancies over time. Test minimization aims at removing redundant test cases. However, current techniques remove whole test cases from the test suite using test adequacy criteria, such as code coverage. This has two limitations, namely (1) by removing a whole test case the corresponding test assertions are also lost, which can inhibit test suite effectiveness, (2) the issue of partly redundant test cases, i.e., tests with redundant test statements, is ignored. We propose a novel approach for fine-grained test case minimization. Our analysis is based on the inference of a test suite model that enables automated test reorganization within test cases. It enables removing redundancies at the test statement level, while preserving the coverage and test assertions of the test suite. We evaluated our approach, implemented in a tool called Testler, on the test suites of 15 open source projects. Our analysis shows that over 4,639 (24%) of the tests in these test suites are partly redundant, with over 11,819 redundant test statements in total. Our results show that Testler removes 43% of the redundant test statements, reducing the number of partly redundant tests by 52%. As a result, test suite execution time is reduced by up to 37% (20% on average), while maintaining the original statement coverage, branch coverage, test assertions, and fault detection capability.
Growth with Exhaustible Natural Resources: Efficient and Optimal Growth Paths

The proposition that limited natural resources provide a limit to growth and to the sustainable size of population is an old one. The natural resource that was the centre of the discussion in Malthus' day was land; more recently, some concern has been expressed over the limitations imposed by the supplies of oil, or more generally, energy sources, of phosphorus, and of other materials required for production. Those who predicted imminent doom in the nineteenth century were obviously wrong. Were they simply wrong about the immediacy of catastrophe, or did they leave out something fundamental from their calculations? There are at least three economic forces offsetting the limitations imposed by natural resources: technical change, the substitution of man-made factors of production (capital) for natural resources, and returns to scale. This study is an attempt to determine more precisely under what conditions a sustainable level of per capita consumption is feasible, to characterize steady state paths in economies with natural resources, and to describe the optimal growth path of the economy, in particular to derive the optimal rate of extraction and the optimal savings rate in the presence of exhaustible natural resouces. One of the interesting problems posed by the presence of exhaustible natural resources is that some of the basic concepts of growth theory, such as " steady state " and " natural rate of growth ", need to be re-examined. If, for instance, there are two unproduced factors, labour and natural resources, one of which is growing exponentially, the other of which is not growing at all, what is the " natural rate of growth "? In conventional economic discussions, the long-run growth rate of the economy is determined simply by the natural rate of growth and is independent of the savings rate. We shall show that in economies with natural resources, efficient growth paths which differ with respect to savings rate also differ, even asymptotically, with respect to the rate of growth. The analysis of optimal growth paths presents certain technical difficulties, because there are two state variables (the stock of capital per man and the stock of natural resources per man) and two control variables (the rate of extraction of natural resources and the savings rate). Fortunately, by the appropriate choice of variables, the qualitative properties of the path can be completely described. Optimal growth paths for economies with only capital or with just natural resources have been examined elsewhere. Typically, a country begins with little capital and hence, in the former models, optimal growth is characterized by increasing consumption per capita. On the other hand, natural resources act much like a capital good; since the stock
The international imperfect banking systems: the Israeli case

Purpose – The banking system has a huge impact on a nation's economic environment. A concentrated banking system has a negative impact on the economy. Therefore, the research in this paper has two main goals: to explore the main factors that impact the level of concentration in the banking system; and to demonstrate how a reform in a banking system can reduce the negative impact of high levels of concentration.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 42 nations was used with various levels of concentration in their banking system to examine factors influencing bank concentration. Logit and OLS regressions were conducted to highlight the impact of the independent variables on the level of concentration in those nations. The latest Israeli reforms in the banking system were used to illustrate how reforms reduce concentration.Findings – The empirical results concluded that economic freedom had a positive impact on the level of concentration. It was also found that cultural variables had an impact on the con.
ChainerMN: Scalable Distributed Deep Learning Framework

One of the keys for deep learning to have made a breakthrough in various fields was to utilize high computing powers centering around GPUs. Enabling the use of further computing abilities by distributed processing is essential not only to make the deep learning bigger and faster but also to tackle unsolved challenges. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of ChainerMN, the distributed deep learning framework we have developed. We demonstrate that ChainerMN can scale the learning process of the ResNet-50 model to the ImageNet dataset up to 128 GPUs with the parallel efficiency of 90%.
Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Turkey

This spreadsheet contains the data that is an input into: Kym Anderson and Johan Swinnen, "Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Eastern Europe and Central Asia" Agricultural Distortions Working Paper 63, September 2008 . Available at www.worldbank. org/agdistortions and, without its Appendix, as Ch 6 in Distortions to Agricultural Incentives: A Global Perspective, 1955 to 2007 edited by K. Anderson, Washington DC: World Bank, 2009. AND Alison Burrell and Marianne Kurzweil, "Distortions to Agricultrual Incentives in Turkey" Agricultural Distortions Working Paper 10, December 2007. Available at www.worldbank. org/agdistortions and, without its Appendix, as Ch 3 in Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Europe’s Transition Economics edited by K. Anderson and J. Swinnen, Washington DC: World Bank, 2008.
Factor Scarcity, Factor Abundance and Attitudes Towards protection: The 3x3 Model

The Stolper-Samuelson Theorem is still alive and well-and being debated-after fifty years. The original statement of the theorem was couched in a two-factor, two commodity setting in which technology exhibits constant returns to scale and the absence of joint production. Competitive pressures then ensure that if a policy of tariff protection raises the relative domestic price of importables, the real re ward to the productive factor used intensively in the import-competing sector must unambiguously rise. The logic is impeccable, but subsequent attempts to expand the dimensionality of the setting have been less successful in pinning down the effects of protection on real factor returns, a result perhaps neither unwarranted nor undesirable since it reveals that relationships among a small subset of varia bles can be altered by conditions of technology and relative endowments concern ing other variables in the model. A few years after the appearance of the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem a pair of articles by Lloyd Metzler [1949a, 1949b] suggested the possibility that for a large country a tariff might not be protective. If such a (Metzler) paradox were to pre vail, a tariff would be opposed by labor if the import-competing good were labor intensive. I suspect that the Metzler possibility, suggesting a reversal of the Stolper Samuelson Theorem as originally stated, was instrumental in causing the theorem to be recast in terms of the effect of changes in domestic commodity prices on the rewards to domestic factors. It was this commodity price-factor price link that was so painstakingly (and frustratdngly) analyzed in the late 1960's and early 1970's by Kemp and Wegge [1969], Chipman [1969], Uekawa [1971], Inada [1971] and others. By contrast, a recent piece by Learner [1991] serves as a reminder of the trade setting of the original argument. Learner raises the question of the atti
High efficiency silicon X-ray detectors

Thick silicon multicathode detectors (SMCDs) for high efficiency X-ray detection have been designed, fabricated, and tested. These thick detectors (up to 1.5 mm thick) extend the practical X-ray detection range from the current level of /spl sim/20 keV, up to /spl sim/40 keV, while still maintaining the low noise and high count rate performance of the thinner (/spl sim/0.3 mm) SMCD technology. The increase in X-ray detection efficiency at higher energies will have a significant impact on practical uses of these detectors in a wide variety of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) applications. In addition to increasing the detection efficiency for X-rays, the thick silicon detectors will offer improved efficiency for high energy electrons, alphas, and other light particles in nuclear physics and astrophysics applications. Very high resistivity float zone material was used for the substrates to minimize the operating voltages required. Multiguard ring structures were designed to prevent the premature breakdown of the devices at the voltages required to fully deplete the thick detectors. We have measured 172 and 158 eV full-width at half-maximum energy resolution at 5.9 keV (at 4 /spl mu/s and 12 /spl mu/s peaking time, respectively, -55/spl deg/C) on 1 mm thick prototype detectors. Spectral performance, energy resolution, efficiency, and count rate performance are presented.
Austrian Government Expenditures: ―Wagner's Law‖ Or ―Baumol's Disease‖?

Government expenditures have grown in Austria during most of the 20 th century. In this paper, we present empirical evidence for this growth process and analyze some of its possible reasons. In particular, two prominent theoretical explanations for public sector growth are tested for Austria: first, “Wagner’s Law” hypothesizing a positive income elasticity of demand for public goods, and second, “Baumol’s Cost Disease”, relating public sector growth to above-average cost increases in the public sector as compared to the private sector. The empirical evidence confirms the importance of the “Cost Disease” for Austria but cannot confirm the validity of “Wagner’s Law”. Business cycles influence government expenditures in the short run, while a number of variables suggested by public choice theories – except for fiscal illusion – do not significantly influence the growth of the public sector in Austria.
Comparison of the Diagnostic Accuracy and Validity of a Short Version of Teen Screen Questionnaire-Mental Health (TSQ -M-Short) for Use in Community

Background: A few self-administered questionnaires are available for assessing mental health among adolescents in primary-care settings. Brief measures are desirable for use in big-data, epidemiological studies. Objectives: To evaluate a 7-item version, of the Teen Screen Questionnaire-Mental Health (TSQ-M), the TSQ-M-Short. Materials and Methods: In this prospective cross-sectional study of 140 adolescents, recruited from 6 rural or urban schools, the newly developed TSQ-M-Short as the measure for validation and General Health Questionnaire-12 item (GHQ-12) as the gold standard measure were administered by independent trained raters. Tests for diagnostic accuracy and validity were conducted. Results: A total TSQ-M-Short score of ≥ 6 had a sensitivity of 76%, specificity of 74%, positive likelihood ratio of 2.99, negative likelihood ratio of 0.33, positive predictive value of 6% and a negative predictive value of 82.1%. The area under curve (AUC) in the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) for the TSQ-M-Short version was 0.84 (95% cumulative incidence (CI) = 0.76-0.89). The AUC for the TSQ-M-Short version was higher than the AUC for the original version, and the difference between the areas was 0.10 (95% CI = 0.02-0.19), which was statistically significant (z = 2.49; P = 0.01). The internal consistency of TSQ-M-Short, as measured by chronbach's α, was 0.34 (95% CI = 0.15-0.48). The construct validity demonstrated a 3-factor structure, which explained 55% of the variance. Conclusion: The TSQ-M-Short has an overall diagnostic accuracy which is better than the original TSQ-M. Although the original version includes symptoms for more mental health disorders, providing a wider screen. This short version will prove useful in big-data studies.