Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identifying women at risk of postnatal depression: prospective longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE To identify psychosocial risk factors for postnatal depression among Hong Kong Chinese women. DESIGN Prospective longitudinal study involving self-report questionnaires and face-to-face interviews. SETTING University teaching hospital, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS Two hundred and twenty consecutive Chinese women who were admitted to the postnatal ward of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology from 6 November 1996 to 18 January 1997. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Psychiatric diagnoses were established using the clinician-administered Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Psychosocial risk factors were ascertained by conducting face-to-face interviews and using psychometric rating scales. RESULTS Of the 330 women who delivered during the study period, 220 (66.7%) agreed to participate in the study. The 220 participants had a mean age of 29 years (range, 16-42 years). Postnatal depression was associated with depression during pregnancy, elevated depression score at delivery, and prolonged postnatal 'blues'. Other correlates of postnatal depression were temporary housing accommodation, financial difficulties, two or more induced abortions, past psychiatric disorders (including depression), and an elevated neuroticism score. Postnatal depression was more likely if the spouse was disappointed with the gender of the newborn. CONCLUSION Some risk factors are similar to those found in the West, whereas others (spouse disappointment and history of abortion) may be unique to the local population. To help identify women who are at particularly high risk of developing postnatal depression, obstetricians and midwives in Hong Kong should consider codifying the identified risk factors into a check-list.
How to obtain high returns with lower volatility in emerging markets?

Abstract Emerging markets equity indexes are usually seen as high return with a high degree of volatility associated with them. However, this should not be the case, if you choose high-quality firms that have increasing returns and lower volatility. The intent of this paper is to introduce the risk weighted alpha (RWA) indexation method that helps identify stocks that have stable increasing returns with lower volatility. In order to review this method in the context of emerging markets scenario, this paper takes the example of the Sensex index listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) that comprises India’s top 30 stocks by market capitalisation. Results show that some stocks like Hindustan Lever do show increasing returns and lower volatility. The RWA Sensex index outperforms the BSE Sensex index, while still maintaining a beta that is the same as that in the BSE Sensex index.
Vascular aging in the longest‐living rodent, the naked mole‐rat

Interspecies comparative assessment of vascular function among rodents with disparate longevity may offer insight into the mechanisms determining successful vascular aging. Previously we have shown that in shorter‐living mice and rats vascular aging is characterized by impaired endothelium‐dependent, nitric oxide‐mediated responses, oxidative stress and enhanced apoptotic cell death. The naked mole‐rat (NMR) is the longest‐living rodent known (maximum lifespan potential [MLSP]: >28 years). The present study was designed to compare aging‐induced changes in endothelial function and production of reactive oxygen species in NMR arteries and vessels of shorter‐living F344 rats (MLSP: ~3 years). There was a significant age‐dependent decline in acetylcholine‐induced responses in vessels of 14‐16 months old (~43% of MLSP) and 24 month old (~67% of MLSP) F344 rats. In contrast compared to vessels of young animals (<2 years old), carotid arteries of aged NMRs (~12 years old; relative age: ~43% of MLSP) exhibited unaltered NO‐mediated relaxation responses to acetylcholine and to the NO donor SNAP. Cellular O2. ‐ and H2O2 production significantly increased in aged rat arteries, whereas they did not change substantially with age in NMR vessels. Apoptotic cell death was significantly enhanced in arteries of 24 month old rats (as indicated by a 190% increase in DNA fragmentation rate). In contrast, vessels from 12 years old NMRs exhibited only a 52 % increase in DNA fragmentation rate. Thus, long‐living NMRs can maintain a youthful vascular function relatively longer and are better protected against aging‐induced oxidative stress than shorter‐living rats.
Contingent Work and Gender in Australia: Evidence from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey

The decreasing prevalence of the standard model of employment embodied by the ‘typical male full-time employee on a permanent contract’ can be seen both as risking the erosion of hard won labour rights and as offering the potential for a more flexible, less ‘male’ model. This paper addresses some of the ways in which this tension is played out, drawing on data from the 1995 Australian Workplace Industrial Relations (AWIRS95) Employee Survey to examine the implications for women workers of recent trends in contingent employment in Australia. Our analysis suggests that the growth in contingent employment in Australia has had little positive impact on women's experience of work. We conclude that if the disadvantage faced by women in irregular employment is to be countered, greater regulation of such employment is required. However, key features of the Workplace
Analysis of mutation in human cells by using an Epstein-Barr virus shuttle system

We developed highly sensitive shuttle vector systems for detection of mutations formed in human cells using autonomously replicating derivatives of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). EBV vectors carrying the bacterial lacI gene as the target for mutation were established in human cells and later returned to Escherichia coli for rapid detection and analysis of lacI mutations. The majority of the clonal cell lines created by establishment of the lacI-EBV vector show spontaneous LacI- frequencies of less than 10(-5) and are suitable for studies of induced mutation. The ability to isolate clonal lines represents a major advantage of the EBV vectors over transiently replicating shuttle vectors (such as those derived from simian virus 40) for the study of mutation. The DNA sequence changes were determined for 61 lacI mutations induced by exposure of one of the cell lines to N-nitroso-N-methylurea. A total of 33 of 34 lacI nonsense mutations and 26 of 27 missense mutations involve G X C to A X T transitions. These data provide support for the mutational theory of cancer.
Preferences, property rights, and anonymity in bargaining games

Research on ultimatum and dictator games has found that because of "fairness" first movers in such games offer more than noncooperative game theory predicts. We find that if the right to be the first mover is "earned" by scoring high on a general knowledge quiz, then first movers behave in a more self-regarding manner. We also conducted dictator double blind experiments, in which the experimenter could not identify the decision maker. The results yielded by far our largest observed incidence of self-regarding offers, suggesting that offers are due to strategic and expectation considerations. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C78, C91.
An examination of the relationships among market orientation, innovation resources, reputational resources, and company performance in the transitional economy of Slovenia†

We investigated relationships among market orientation, innovation and reputational resources, and their impact on market performance and fi nancial performance within the transitional economy of Slovenia. Market orientation related positively to market and fi nancial performance of fi rms indirectly through innovation and reputational resources. Reputational resources associated positively with loyalty, market share, and sales volume, innovation resources associated positively with market share, and sales volume indirectly through customer loyalty. Selected marketing resources related positively to fi cial performance indirectly through customer loyalty, market share, and sales volume. The implications of these fi ndings for theory and practice are considered. Copyright © 2007 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. JEL Classifi cation: M31, M10
Smiles as Signals of Lower Status in Football Players and Fashion Models: Evidence That Smiles are Associated with Lower Dominance and Lower Prestige

Across four studies, the current paper demonstrates that smiles are associated with lower social status. Moreover, the association between smiles and lower status appears in the psychology of observers and generalizes across two forms of status: prestige and dominance. In the first study, faces of fashion models representing less prestigious apparel brands were found to be more similar to a canonical smile display than the faces of models representing more prestigious apparel brands. In a second study, after being experimentally primed with either high or low prestige fashion narratives, participants in the low prestige condition were more likely to perceive smiles in a series of photographs depicting smiling and non-smiling faces. A third study of football player photographs revealed that the faces of less dominant (smaller) football players were more similar to the canonical smile display than the faces of their physically larger counterparts. Using the same football player photographs, a fourth study found that smiling was a more reliable indicator of perceived status-relevant personality traits than perceptions of the football players' physical sizes inferred from the photographs.
Environmental Protest in Western Europe

Preface List of Contributors List of Figures List of Tables Abbreviations and Accronyms 1. The Transformation of Environmental Activism: An Introduction 2. Britain 3. France 4. Germany 5. Greece 6. Italy 7. Spain 8. The Basque Country 9. Sweden 10. Conclusion: Environmental Protest Transformed? Appendix A: The Methodology of Protest Event Analysis and the Media Politics of Reporting Environmental Protest Events Appendix B: The TEA (Transformation of Environmental Activism) Project Index
Endogeneity in the Concentration-Price Relationship: Causes, Consequences, and Cures

The ordinary least squares estimator of the effect of concentration on price is biased for two reasons. First, performance feeds back into structure, causing a simultaneous equations bias. Second, as a function of outputs or revenues, measured concentration is correlated with determinants of price that are, at best, measured with error, so measured concentration is correlated with the error term. With panel data, fixed-effects procedures can be combined with instrumental variables to eliminate bias from both sources. In concentration-price regressions for the airline industry, the bias can be substantial and negative. Copyright 1993 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
EEMD Domain AR Spectral Method for Mean Scatterer Spacing Estimation of Breast Tumors From Ultrasound Backscattered RF Data

We present a novel method for estimating the mean scatterer spacing (MSS) of breast tumors using ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) domain analysis of deconvolved backscattered radio frequency (RF) data. The autoregressive (AR) spectrum from which the MSS is estimated is obtained from the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) due to regular scatterers embedded in RF data corrupted by the diffuse scatterers. The IMFs are chosen by giving priority to the presence of an enhanced fundamental harmonic and the presence of a greater number of higher harmonics in the AR spectrum estimated from the IMFs. The AR model order is chosen by minimizing the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) criterion. In order to ensure that the backscattered data is indeed from a source of coherent scattering, we begin by performing a non-parametric Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K–S) classification test on the backscattered RF data. Deconvolution of the backscattered RF data, which have been classified by the K–S test as sources of significant coherent scattering, is done to reduce the system effect. EEMD domain analysis is then performed on the deconvolved data. The proposed method is able to recover the harmonics associated with the regular scatterers and overcomes many problems encountered while estimating the MSS from the AR spectrum of raw RF data. Using our technique, a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 5.78% is obtained while estimating the MSS from simulated data, which is lower than that of the existing techniques. Our proposed method is shown to outperform the state of the art techniques, namely, singular spectrum analysis, generalized spectrum (GS), spectral autocorrelation (SAC), and modified SAC for different simulation conditions. The MSS for in vivo normal breast tissue is found to be 0.69 ± 0.04 mm; for benign and malignant tumors it is found to be 0.73 ± 0.03 and 0.79 ± 0.04 mm, respectively. The separation between the MSS values of normal and benign tissues for our proposed method is similar to the separations obtained for the conventional methods, but the separation between the MSS values for benign and malignant tissues for our proposed method is slightly higher than that for the conventional methods. When the MSS is used to classify breast tumors into benign and malignant, for a threshold-based classifier, the increase in specificity, accuracy, and area under curve are 18%, 19%, and 22%, respectively, and that for statistical classifiers are 9%, 13%, and 19%, respectively, from that of the next best existing technique.
Sift-based camera tamper detection for video surveillance

Keeping the camera long time proper functioning without tamper is the fundamentally requirement of a video surveillance system. Traditional camera tamper detection is applied by surveillance system operators. It's large human resource consuming and inefficiency. In this paper, a SIFT-based automatic camera tamper detection algorithm for video surveillance is proposed. When camera tamper occurred, the real-time frame will be large changed. Therefore, a Sift feature based decision function is employed to detect camera tamper. The threshold is carefully chosen to reduce false alarms. Several experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and robust of the proposed method.
Compression of unfocused plenoptic images using a displacement intra prediction

Plenoptic images are one type of light field contents produced by using a combination of a conventional camera and an additional optical component in the form of microlens arrays, which are positioned in front of the image sensor surface. This camera setup can capture a sub-sampling of the light field with high spatial fidelity over a small range, and with a more coarsely sampled angle range. The earliest applications that leverage on the plenoptic image content is image refocusing, non-linear distribution of out-of-focus areas, SNR vs. resolution trade-offs, and 3D-image creation. All functionalities are provided by using post-processing methods. In this work, we evaluate a compression method that we previously proposed for a different type of plenoptic image (focused or plenoptic camera 2.0 contents) than the unfocused or plenoptic camera 1.0 that is used in this Grand Challenge. The method is an extension of the state-of-the-art video compression standard HEVC where we have brought the capability of bi-directional inter-frame prediction into the spatial prediction. The method is evaluated according to the scheme set out by the Grand Challenge, and the results show a high compression efficiency compared with JPEG, i.e., up to 6 dB improvements for the tested images.
The Baby Boom: Predictability in House Prices and Interest Rates

This paper explores the baby boom's impact on U.S. house prices and interest rates in the post-war 20th century and beyond. Using a simple Lucas asset pricing model, I quantitatively account for the increase in real house prices, the path of real interest rates, and the timing of low-frequency fluctuations in real house prices. The model predicts that the primary force underlying the evolution of real house prices is the systematic and predictable changes in the working age population driven by the baby boom. The model is calibrated to U.S. data and tested on international data. One surprising success of the model is its ability to predict the boom and bust in Japanese real estate markets around 1974 and 1990.
An Intelligent Path Selection Algorithm Based on Deep Reinforcement Learning

Path selection is the most important algorithm in intelligent devices such as robots. At present, the traditional path-planning algorithm has achieved some results, but it lacks the ability of environmental perception and continuous learning. In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes an intelligent path selection algorithm based on deep reinforcement learning, which uses the learning ability of deep learning and the decision-making ability of reinforcement learning to realize the autonomous path planning of robots and other equipment. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has faster convergence, efficiency and accuracy.
High heat flux evaporation from nanoporous silicon membranes

We investigated the evaporative cooling performance of a nanoporous membrane based thermal management solution designed for ultra-high heat flux dissipation from high performance integrated circuits. The biporous evaporation device utilizes thermally-connected, mechanically-supported, high capillarity membranes that maximize thin film evaporation and high permeability liquid supply channels that minimize viscous pressure losses. The 600 nm thick membrane was created on a silicon on insulator (SOI) wafer, fusion-bonded to a separate wafer with larger liquid channels. Overall device performance arising from non-uniform heating and evaporation of methanol was captured experimentally. Heat fluxes up to 412 W/cm2 over an area of 0.4×5 mm, at a temperature rise of 24.1 K from the heated substrate to ambient vapor, were obtained. These results are in good agreement with a high-fidelity coupled fluid convection and solid conduction compact model that incorporates non-equilibrium and sub-continuum effects at the liquid-vapor interface. This work provides a proof-of-concept demonstration of our biporous evaporation device. Simulations of the validated model at optimized operating conditions and with improved working fluids, predict heat dissipation in excess of 1 kW/cm2 with a device temperature rise under 30 K, for this scalable cooling approach.
The budget impact of cervical cancer screening using HPV primary screening.

OBJECTIVES This study assessed the clinical and budgetary impacts of human papillomavirus (HPV) primary screening with HPV16/18 genotyping, in contrast to current cervical cancer screening strategies. STUDY DESIGN A decision-tree framework and Markov model were used to model clinical and cost implications of screening and diagnosis of disease. METHODS A model was developed to compare the annual clinical and budgetary impact of HPV screening with genotyping versus cytology, and co-testing with and without genotyping. Epidemiology and test performance inputs are from the literature and the Addressing THE Need for Advanced HPV Diagnostics (ATHENA) trial. Costs are from a US payer perspective. Clinical impact was measured as the resulting incidence of cervical cancer, and budget impact is reported as annual cost per screened woman. The model considered the impact of patient noncompliance (loss to follow-up) at both the initial screen and re-test. RESULTS Cytology was found to be inferior to both co-testing and HPV primary screening. Co-testing was inferior to co-testing with genotyping. Co-testing with genotyping every 3 years (incidence = 5.5 per 100,000 women; annual investment = $61) or 5 years (incidence = 7.4 per 100,000 women; annual investment = $37) was slightly more effective, but more costly than HPV primary screening every 3 years (incidence = 6.2 per 100,000 women; annual investment = $48) or 5 years (incidence = 8.1 per 100,000 women; annual investment = $30). Genotyping strategies were relatively stable to the effects of patient noncompliance. CONCLUSIONS Primary HPV screening with genotyping represents a sensible combination of clinical effectiveness and costs, while reducing the risks associated with patient noncompliance.
REAP: An Efficient Incentive Mechanism for Reconciling Aggregation Accuracy and Individual Privacy in Crowdsensing

Incentive mechanism plays a critical role in privacy-aware crowdsensing. Most previous studies assume a trustworthy fusion center (FC) in their co-design of incentive mechanism and privacy preservation. Very recent work has taken the step to relax the assumption on trustworthy FC and allowed participatory users (PUs) to randomly report their binary sensing data, whereas the focus is to examine PUs’ equilibrium behavior. Making a paradigm shift, this paper aims to study the privacy compensation for continuous data sensing while allowing FC to directly control PUs. There are two conflicting objectives in such a scenario: FC desires better quality data in order to achieve higher aggregation accuracy whereas PUs prefer injecting larger noises for higher privacy-preserving levels (PPLs). To strike a good balance therein, we propose an efficient incentive mechanism named REAP to reconcile FC’s aggregation accuracy and individual PU’s data privacy. Specifically, we adopt the celebrated notion of differential privacy to quantify PUs’ PPLs and characterize their impacts on FC’s aggregation accuracy. Then, appealing to contract theory, we design an incentive mechanism to maximize FC’s aggregation accuracy under a given budget. The proposed incentive mechanism offers different contracts to PUs with different privacy preferences, by which FC can directly control them. It can further overcome the information asymmetry problem, i.e., FC typically does not know each PU’s precise privacy preference. We derive closed-form solutions for the optimal contracts in both complete information and incomplete information scenarios. Further, the results are generalized to the continuous case where PUs’ privacy preferences take values in a continuous domain. Extensive simulations are provided to validate the feasibility and advantages of our proposed incentive mechanism.
On speculators and hedgers in currency futures markets: who leads whom?

This paper studies the lead–lag relationship between speculation and hedging activity in six currency futures markets. The relations between (i) total speculation (long plus short) and total hedging (long plus short), (ii) long speculation and short hedging, and (iii) short speculation and long hedging are investigated. The empirical results, based on vector autoregressive and vector error correction models, suggest that speculators lead hedgers in all markets examined. Moreover, speculators attract hedgers to open positions in currency futures markets. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The cost of sustainability in optimal portfolio decisions

We examined the impact of including sustainability-related constraints in optimal portfolio decision-making. Our analysis covered an investment set containing the components of the S&P500 index from 1993 to 2008. Optimizations were performed according to the classic mean–variance approach, while sustainability constraints were introduced by eliminating, from the investment pool, those assets that do not comply with the given social responsibility criteria (screening). We compared the efficient frontiers with and without screening. The analysis focused on the three main dimensions of sustainability, namely the environmental, social and governance ones. We found that socially responsible screening gives rise to a small loss in terms of the Sharpe ratio even though it has a great impact on the market capitalization of the optimal portfolio. The spanning test showed that the ex-post differences between the two frontiers, when short selling is not allowed, are significant only in the case of environmental screening.