Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inflation Bias with Dynamic Phillips Curves and Impatient Policy Makers

We generalize the analysis of inflation bias with dynamic Phillips curves in three respects. First, we examine the discretionary (time consistent) solution in cases where the Phillips curve has both a backward-looking and forward-looking component. Second, we show that the commitment (time inconsistent) solution does not normally involve zero inflation and output at its natural rate. Instead, with a purely forward-looking Phillips curve and positive discounting, it will involve a dynamic path for inflation in which steady state inflation is below its target. In this sense, we obtain negative inflation bias. Third, we show that the timeless perspective policy has the same steady state as the commitment case, but without any short-term output gains.
Determinants of risk factors of atherosclerosis in the postinfarction period: The Tallinn MI Study

Environmental as well as genetic factors are involved in the pathogenesis of myocardial infarction. The disease is a frequent cause of mortality in the middle‐aged male population of Estonia. The high prevalence of premature myocardial infarction (PMI) in this country is not fully understood. The association of atherogenic and thrombogenetic risk factors with lifestyle was evaluated in men who had suffered myocardial infarction at⩽55 years of age (n = 71) and in randomly selected corresponding controls (n = 85). Serum routine lipids, apolipoprotein (apo)A‐I, apoB, apoE polymorphism, lipoprotein(a) and fibrinogen levels were determined. Behavioural risk factors, indices of obesity, blood pressure and pedigree data were registered. In 80.6 % of PMI subjects some type of hyperlipidaemia was observed (European Atherosclerosis Society Classification) and lipid‐lowering drugs were taken by 13.9 % of patients. In PMI patients the most common positive determinants of atherogenic lipoprotein indices were waist‐to‐hip ratio and physical inactivity, and in controls, waist‐to‐hip ratio and apoE phenotype. The odds ratio (OR) of PMI was 8.9‐fold greater in the highest tertile of apoB/apoA‐I distribution compared with the lowest tertile. The OR of PMI in the highest tertile of fibrinogen distribution versus the lowest tertile was 6.2 (95 % CI 2.46–15.44), and OR of PMI in the highest Lp(a) tertile versus the lowest was 3.1 (95 % CI 1.31–7.40). Thus, atherogenic dyslipidaemia was the most serious cardiovascular risk factor among PMI patients. From two thrombogenesis‐related markers, the levels of fibrinogen and Lp(a), the first one was more strongly associated with PMI status.
Classification of desired motion speed — A study based on cerebral hemoglobin information

To achieve more intelligent performance for walking-assistive devices, spontaneous motion intention of walking speed should be identified for providing a control command. In this paper, cerebral hemoglobin information was analyzed to recognize three levels of walking speed: low speed, medium speed and high speed. Eleven subjects carried out walking experiment in three speed levels with cerebral hemoglobin information being recorded. Oxygenated hemoglobin (oxyHb) was mainly analyzed. OxyHb signals were decomposed into four frequency bands ((I) 0Hz∼0.03Hz, (II) 0.03Hz∼0.06Hz, (III) 0.06Hz∼0.09Hz, (IV) 0.09Hz∼0.12Hz) by using wavelet packets. A novel method of time-frequency-space analysis was proposed to seek for significant regional features by combining the significant channels and their adjacent areas. Support vector machine (SVM) method was used for pattern recognition, and the corresponding recognition rate of three levels of speed achieved to 75%. The results indicate that the proposed method of time-frequency-space analysis is feasible for recognizing expected walking speed, and cerebral hemoglobin information could reflect humans' spontaneous motion intention. Moreover, it may provide a more intelligent control method for walking-assistive devices and promote its development in the future.
Valuation and Cost of Capital Formulae with Corporate and Personal Taxes: A Synthesis Using the Dempsey Discounted Dividends Model

This paper advances expressions for the firm's valuation and cost of capital as a function of leverage. The framework is arrived at by introducing leverage in Dempsey's (1996 and 1998) cost of capital framework and is applicable in the context of both classical and imputation tax systems. The framework reveals that both the historical stability of corporate leverage and the firm's choice of financing structure as revealed by the Pecking Order hypothesis are consistent with a tax-based explanation. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.
Acoustic Rhinometry and Aspirin Nasal Challenge in the Diagnosis of Aspirin-Intolerant Asthma: Clinical Finding and Safety Aspects

Background: The safety and utility of nasal provocation tests with lysine-aspirin (l-ASA) in the diagnosis of aspirin-intolerant asthma (AIA) have previously been described in a short series of patients. Objectives: To describe the clinical features and safety of an l-ASA challenge test in patients with AIA. Methods: We evaluated 72 patients (79% women), with a mean ± SD age of 47.9 ± 14.5 years. All patients were submitted to an l-ASA nasal provocation test (29 mg in each nostril) under acoustic rhinometry (AcR) control. Symptom score (0–3), visual analogical scale and nitric oxide determinations were performed at baseline and at 15, 30, 60 and 90 min. A decrease in nasal volume of at least 25% was considered a positive test. Nasal nitric oxide (nNO) and forced expiratory volume in 1 s were measured. Results: Nasal congestion and rhinorrhea represented 51 and 32%, respectively, of total symptoms. According to AcR data, the l-ASA challenge test was positive in 20% of patients at 15 min, an additional 36% were positive at 30 min, 18% at 60 min, and the remaining 26% at 90 min. nNO nasal values decreased but did not reach statistical significance. No pulmonary or systemic reactions were observed. Conclusions: Symptoms of nasal congestion associated with the reduction in nasal volume measured by AcR are the most useful parameters for establishing the diagnosis of AIA using the l-ASA nasal challenge. The method is very well tolerated and can be safely used even in patients with severe asthma.
Evaluation of ACE‐FTS and OSIRIS Satellite retrievals of ozone and nitric acid in the tropical upper troposphere: Application to ozone production efficiency

[1] We evaluate climatologies of upper tropospheric ozone and nitric acid retrieved from two satellite instruments (ACE-FTS and OSIRIS) with long-term in situ measurements from aircraft (MOZAIC, CR-AVE, PRE-AVE, PEM Tropics, and TC4) and ozonesondes. A global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) is used to guide the evaluation and to relate sparse in situ measurements with the satellite retrievals. Both satellite retrievals generally reproduce broad ozone features in the upper troposphere such as summer enhancements in the northern subtropics and larger concentrations over the tropical Atlantic versus the tropical Pacific. These comparisons indicate biases in annual, tropical mean ozone concentrations from both ACE-FTS (10–13%) and OSIRIS (5%) relative to aircraft and ozonesonde observations. More uncertain evidence suggests that nitric acid from ACE-FTS has a positive mean bias of 15%. We demonstrate that an upper limit on the ozone production efficiency in the upper troposphere can be determined using ACE-FTS satellite measurements of O3 and HNO3. The resulting value of 196 (+34, −61) mol/mol is in broad agreement with model simulations. Higher OPE values inferred from ACE-FTS over the tropical Pacific (249 (+21, −68) mol/mol) than the tropical Atlantic (146 (+16, −41) mol/mol) reflect increasing ozone production efficiency with decreasing pollution. This analysis indicates a new capability of satellite observations to provide insight into ozone production in the tropical troposphere.
Mutual Fund Herding and the Impact on Stock Prices

We analyze the trading activity of the mutual fund industry between 1975 and 1994 to determine whether funds "herd" when they trade stocks and to investigate the impact of herding on stock prices. Although we find little herding by mutual funds in the average stock, we find much higher levels in trades of small stocks and in trading by growth-oriented funds. Stocks that herds buy outperform stocks that they sell by four percent during the following six months; this return difference is much more pronounced among small stocks. Our results are consistent with mutual fund herding speeding the price-adjustment process.
Diabetic retinopathy and serum lipoprotein subclasses in the DCCT/EDIC cohort.

PURPOSE To determine associations between retinopathy status and detailed serum lipoprotein subclass profiles in the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial/Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications Study (DCCT/EDIC) cohort. METHODS Persons with type 1 diabetes (440 women, 548 men) from the DCCT/EDIC cohort were studied. Retinopathy was characterized by Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS) scores, hard exudate scores, and ETDRS scores minus the hard exudate component. Lipoproteins were characterized by conventional lipid profile, nuclear magnetic resonance lipoprotein subclass profile (NMR-LSP), apoA1, apoB, lipoprotein(a), and susceptibility of LDL to oxidation. Data were analyzed with and without the following covariates: age, gender, duration of diabetes, HbA(1c), albumin excretion rate (AER), creatinine clearance, hypertension, body mass index, waist-hip ratio, DCCT treatment group, smoking status. RESULTS The severity of retinopathy was positively associated with triglycerides (combined cohort) and negatively associated with HDL cholesterol (men, combined cohort). NMR-LSP identified retinopathy as being positively associated with small and medium VLDL and negatively with VLDL size. In men only, retinopathy was positively associated with small LDL, LDL particle concentration, apoB concentration, and small HDL and was negatively associated with large LDL, LDL size, large HDL, and HDL size. No associations were found with apoA1, Lp(a), or susceptibility of LDL to oxidation. All three measures of retinopathy revealed the same associations. CONCLUSIONS NMR-LSP reveals new associations between serum lipoproteins and severity of retinopathy in type 1 diabetes. The data are consistent with a role for dyslipoproteinemia involving lipoprotein subclasses in the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy.
The Post-Coup Military Spending Question Revisited, 1960–2000

Do military regimes spend more on the military than other regime types? All leaders cater to their winning coalition. For military leaders, core supporters are other members of the military. To solicit support from this group, first, leaders are persuaded to spend more on the military to ensure their political survival, while other autocratic leaders tend to view the military as a competing power center. Second, the cost of repressing challenges from the public in military regimes is cheaper than in other regimes; therefore, leaders in military regimes allocate more resources to the military to satisfy them. We test this argument by examining military spending in different regime types for 1960–2000. The empirical results from Prais-Winsten regression with panel-corrected standard errors indicate that military regimes allocate more, on average, to the military than other regimes and that military rulers brought into power through military coups or who have experienced military coup attempts against them increase their military resource allocation.
Combinatorial Knowledge Dynamics: On the Usefulness of the Differentiated Knowledge Bases Model

On the basis of existing literature and newly collected empirical evidence this article discusses the theoretical, empirical, research methodological and policy implications of a recently introduced knowledge taxonomy, the so-called Differentiated Knowledge Bases model (Asheim et al., 2011), which distinguishes between three epistemologically different approaches that are summarized in the notions of analytical (theoretically understanding), synthetic (instrumentally solving problems) and symbolic (culturally creating meanings). The article suggests that these differentiated knowledge bases, though ideal-typical constructs, seem applicable to micro-level, intra- or inter-organizational modes and communities of learning involved in firm innovation but that firms and meso- and macro-level social systems (sectors, clusters, regions, etc.) rarely rely on one single knowledge base but coordinate its actions in more learning modes and communities. The potentials for innovation research of this particular knowledge taxonomy are mainly connected with its integrative and wide perspective on the identification of the types of knowledge, modes of learning and institutional contexts that are relevant for firm innovation and regional economic development and that exceed the sectoral divides and production bias often characterizing innovation research. For innovation policy, this integrative perspective may provide new opportunities for encouraging the development, diffusion and use of economically valuable knowledge of different kinds and from varying societal spheres in ways that truly break with one-size-fits-all policies.
Improving WiFi networking with concurrent connections and multipath TCP

It is increasingly popular that there are multiple accessible access points (APs) surrounding a WiFi client. In an ideal case, the client would simultaneously connects to all the APs and maximize the connections' utilization, for example, aggregating the bandwidth of APs' backhauls, load balancing among the connections, etc. In this paper, we present WM (Wireless virtualization with Multipath TCP) a cross-layer approach that aims to improve performance of mobile WiFi users. The demonstration shows that aWiFi client equipped WM can keep multiple concurrent connections to APs by using wireless virtualization. Moreover, WM enhances the aggregated bandwidth and achieves seamless handover by adopting Multipath TCP.
A quadratically convergent primal decomposition algorithm with soft coupling for nonlinear parameter estimation

Distributed algorithms for sparse, large-scale optimization problems are preferable over centralized solvers when the computational units are physically far apart from each other or the problem size is too large for the available memory. However, most distributed methods sacrifice convergence speed for simpler computations. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm for a certain class of nonconvex, separable optimization problems that combines both distributed computations and locally quadratic convergence. It is based on the principle of primal decomposition with exact Hessian information but uses soft coupling between the agents to avoid global calculations and adapt faster to online data changes. An important application field of the presented method is nonlinear parameter estimation, where increasing the number of experiments may lead to problem dimensions that are prohibitive for conventional solvers. We assess the performance of our method on the identification of an Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) system using real-world experimental data.
Decentralization and environmentally sound decision making : policy implications

Among the major political and economic trends that have been evolving in Latin America in recent years, the emergence of municipal governments as frontline actors stands out. Central American countries have begun to grant local governments greater rights and responsibilities regarding natural resource management. In Guatemala, one of the major pieces of legislation to achieve important rural development goals, as claimed by the government, is the Law of Decentralization. As more decision making is transferred to local governments, one wonders: what are the attitudes of potential local decision makers towards the environment, and which factors may explain such attitudes; what would be the dominant criteria for local decision making in selecting development projects; and, what will be the level of priority assigned to environmental concerns. This paper aims to answer these questions. A two phase analytical process was conducted: first, aiming at determining individual local decision makers´ attitudes towards the environment and identifying the factors that determine such attitudes; secondly, determining whether, in fact, individual attitude could explain actual decision making. Age, gender, education and non-formal environmental training are significant variables in shaping environmental attitudes. Environmental attitude, as measured by the NEPS, is significant in determining pro-environmental investment decisions.
Residential Electricity Revisited

The following is a report on various attempts to update and improve an earlier analysis of residential electricity demand (Houthakker, Verleger, and Sheehan, 1974-hereafter referred to as HVS). To understand what is new the reader should first know what has been maintained, namely: the logarithmic flow-adjustment model which estimates this year's consumption from last year's consumption, this year's price and income, and possibly (though not in HVS) from other variables, the pooling of annual time series for 48 states using the error component approach of Balestra & Nerlove, the use of a "marginal price" for electricity. The present paper may be regarded as a verification of the first of these hypotheses, and to some extent of the other two.
Immigration and redistribution revisited: how different motivations can offset each other

Despite compelling theoretical arguments, research has failed so far to provide conclusive empirical evidence on the relationship between preferences for redistribution and attitudes towards immigration. We argue that social scientists risk making erroneous inferences if the causal link connecting an independent variable to a given outcome is not carefully modelled. This is particularly true in the presence of multiple and partly offsetting intervening variables. We argue that there are at least four motivations linking attitudes towards redistribution and preferred levels of immigration. We observe a statistically significant association between attitudes towards redistribution and preferred levels of immigration, but only after the motivations have been explicitly integrated into the empirical analysis. If the motivations are not explicitly modelled, no systematic relationship between attitudes towards redistribution and preferred levels of immigration can be observed.
A Novel Decision-Tree Method for Structured Continuous-Label Classification

Structured continuous-label classification is a variety of classification in which the label is continuous in the data, but the goal is to classify data into classes that are a set of predefined ranges and can be organized in a hierarchy. In the hierarchy, the ranges at the lower levels are more specific and inherently more difficult to predict, whereas the ranges at the upper levels are less specific and inherently easier to predict. Therefore, both prediction specificity and prediction accuracy must be considered when building a decision tree (DT) from this kind of data. This paper proposes a novel classification algorithm for learning DT classifiers from data with structured continuous labels. This approach considers the distribution of labels throughout the hierarchical structure during the construction of trees without requiring discretization in the preprocessing stage. We compared the results of the proposed method with those of the C4.5 algorithm using eight real data sets. The empirical results indicate that the proposed method outperforms the C4.5 algorithm with regard to prediction accuracy, prediction specificity, and computational complexity.
Enhanced optical nonlinearities in 2D-3D heteromaterials

Remarkable optical and electrical properties of graphene [1] and other two-dimensional (2D) materials provide significant potential for novel optoelectronic applications and devices, many of which depend on nonlinear optical effects in these 2D materials [2, 3]. In this paper, we will review some recent results [4, 5] pertaining to nonlinear optical effects in nanostructured bulk optical media containing homogeneous or nanopatterned 2D materials.
Development of a Concise QOL Questionnaire for Brain Tumor Patients

Background: The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a self-administered questionnaire to measure the health-related quality of life (QOL) of patients with brain cancer. We wanted to assess both core and disease-specific concerns in a single, easy-to-use instrument, thus promoting concision and clinical utility. The questionnaire departs from its predecessors in that it was designed for- and validated among French speaking Canadians. Methods: A focus group of health professionals was used to develop items for the questionnaire, which was later validated with 105 patients suffering from brain cancer. The underlying structure of the questionnaire was investigated using principal component analysis and confirmed using a principal factor analysis. Results: The final version of the questionnaire contains 30 items. Seven multi-item scales, tapping into distinct dimensions of QOL, were uncovered (i.e., functional well-being, symptom severity/fear of death, social support/acceptance of disease, autonomy in personal care, digestive symptomatology, neurocognitive function, and pain). Assessment of reliability revealed elevated internal consistency for each of the seven scales (Cronbach coefficient alpha ≥≥.65), whereas known-groups validity (anchor-based approach) revealed that the different dimensions uniquely discriminated between patients with different functional levels (Karnofsky Performance Scores) and clinical status (exposure to neurosurgery, radiotherapy, and use of chemotherapy and anticonvulsants). Conclusion: Our QOL questionnaire, the Sherbrooke Neuro-Oncology Assessment Scale, or SNAS, taps into both core and disease-specific issues relevant to neuro-oncology patients. It has good validity and reliability, and clearly reflects the multidimensional nature of QOL. Depending on the research focus, it may be used in clinical trials to track the impact of disease and/or treatment on satisfaction, functional status, and general well-being.
Tourism Politics in Lijiang, China: An Analysis of State and Local Interactions in Tourism Development

Abstract Heritage as a tourism commodity has raised expectations about the profits that it can potentially bring. Lijiang Ancient Town, since acquiring World Heritage status in 1997, has become increasingly dependent on state support and private enterprise to maximize this potential. The implication of rapid tourism development is the marginalization of indigenous Naxi as their homes became converted into guesthouses, souvenir shops and other facilities for tourist consumption. State discourse on tourism development as the means to achieve economic development and growth is examined and Naxi reaction to the threat of touristic commodification discussed. Two important spaces, the town square and a food outlet at a major thoroughfare, are used to highlight Naxi efforts to reclaim touristic spaces for everyday activities and as a symbolic representational space of their own cultural identity. In the final analysis, Lijiang's landscape is the result of an interplay between the state, private enterprise and local forces wherein the heterogeneous discourses from each of these are integrated by the Naxi as they go about life in Lijiang Ancient Town.