Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SEAM: A Small-Scale Euro Area Model With Forward-Looking Elements

This paper presents a small-scale estimated macro model for the euro area (SEAM) designed primarily to generate forecasts and to evaluate the dynamic response of the economy to unanticipated and anticipated shocks. One crucial feature of SEAM is the presence of forward-looking elements, which makes the model forecasts more robust to the 'Lucas critique', since it allows economic decisions to be moulded by the future impact of 'surprise' policy actions. In what concerns the reliability of the model-simulations, the inclusion of forward-looking behaviour enriches the dynamics of the response of the model's endogenous variables to exogenous shocks. Although the SEAM does not have the richness of full-scale macroeconometric models, as apparent interalia, by the absence of a steady-state analogue and also of some relationships important for a better characterisation of the euro area economy, the model has been shown to deliver reasonable forecasts and responses to shocks that are consistent with conventional wisdom.
Dez anos de evolução da agricultura familiar no Brasil: (1996 e 2006)

Este artigo compara os principais resultados do censo agropecuario do IBGE de 1996 com os resultados do censo de 2006, seguindo a metodologia conhecida como “FAO-Incra” que permite caracterizar a agricultura familiar delimitando-a no universo total dos estabelecimentos. Na comparacao destacam‑se algumas variaveis significativas, tais como participacao no valor da producao total (VBP), participacao na area total dos estabelecimentos, utilizacao de tecnologia moderna e produtividade parcial de fatores.Os censos mostram que a participacao na producao agropecuaria se manteve praticamente inalterada, passando de 37,91% em 1996 para 36,11% em 2006, numa decada de forte expansao do setor, o que revela que este segmente faz parte das cadeias produtivas agropecuarias do agronegocio brasileiro. A agricultura familiar e um segmento heterogeneo, com diversos subsegmentos. Nos dez anos de pesquisa percebe‑se que houve forte crescimento da participacao na producao do segmento mais abastado da agricultura familiar (A) e um crescimento numerico dos grupos mais pobres da mesma (C e D), sem o correspondente acrescimo de producao.This article compares the main findings of data fromBrazilian agricultural census in 1996 with the same in 2006 by applying the methodology known as “FAO/Incra”, which allows characterizing family farm in relation to the total universe of farms. In this comparison, several variables are presented, such as the participation of family farming in the total value of production, in the total number of farms, utilization of modern technology and partial factor productivity.Their share of total agricultural production stayed almost equal, with slight reduction, from 37.91% in 1996 to 36,11% during a decade of sharp expansion of agriculture as a whole, demonstrating that this segment is integrated in the productive agricultural chains of the Brazilian agribusiness.Family farming is a heterogeneous segment, with different segments. During the period of ten years, the richestof these segments (A) has increased their participation inthe total production, while the poorest sub segments (C and D) have only grown in absolute terms without a corresponding increase in production.
Fasudil Ameliorates Rhabdomyolysis-Induced Acute Kidney Injury via Inhibition of Apoptosis

During times of war or natural disasters, rhabdomyolysis leading to acute kidney injury (AKI) can assume epidemic proportions. Fasudil attenuates ischemia/reperfusion-induced AKI. We investigated the therapeutic effect of an early application of fasudil on AKI induced by rhabdomyolysis and explored the potential mechanisms. Male Wistar rats were randomly divided into a control group (saline, 7 mL/kg, i.m.), a Gly group (50% glycerol, 7 mL/kg, i.m.), and a fasudil group (50% glycerol, 7 mL/kg, i.m.; fasudil, 20 mg/kg bodyweight, i.p., three times every 24 h beginning 72 h before glycerol administration). Serum creatinine, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and histopathological changes were used to demonstrate kidney function 24 h after the glycerol injection. Cell apoptosis and the expression of rho-associated protein kinase member (ROCK1), phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), P-Akt, and caspase-8, -9, and -3 were measured. Serum creatinine and BUN levels increased significantly in Gly group compared with control group. Both levels decreased after fasudil treatment. The renal tubular damage score was significantly lower and cell apoptosis was significantly less in fasudil group compared with Gly group. The expression levels of ROCK1, PTEN, and caspase-8, -9, and -3 were upregulated significantly in Gly group, and their expression was reduced in the fasudil group. The P-Akt level was decreased in Gly group and upregulated significantly in fasudil group. Early application of fasudil reduced rhabdomyolysis-associated renal injury by inhibiting Rho kinase and thereby activating the PI-3K/Akt pathway, which decreased cell apoptosis via both the intrinsic and extrinsic apoptotic pathways.
New Firm Creation: A Global Assessment of National, Contextual, and Individual Factors

The prevalence of individuals actively involved in business creation among 75 countries varies from one in thirty (Japan, Belgium, France) to one in three (Peru, Uganda). Predictive models reflecting five national aspects — economic, structural, centralized control, population potential for entrepreneurship, and cultural support — are able to account for 63% to 93% of the variation in 23 types of business creation. The most important factors associated with the prevalence of business creation are the capacity of the population to participate in business start-ups, a high prevalence of small businesses, participation of women in the labor force, the presence of informal investors, emphasis on traditional rather than secular–rational values, presence of young adults, and income inequality. The use of log linear regression modeling to predict individual participation in 15 types of business creation explained from 14% to 41% of the variance. Personal attributes, national cultural and social norms, and personal context were much more likely to be associated with individual participation in business creation than characteristics of the national economy, economic structure, population readiness for business creation or centralized control of economic activity. The primary policy implication is that efforts to directly prepare individuals for business creation are more likely to have an impact compared to adjustments in regulatory procedures or legal standards. The assessment demonstrates the considerable value from harmonized cross national data on business creation and national attributes. There remains, however, substantial opportunity for improving understanding of the entrepreneurial process.
Effects of using videotaped vignettes on enhancing students' critical thinking ability in a baccalaureate nursing programme.

AIM The aim of this study was to determine the effects of using videotaped vignettes in promoting nursing students' critical thinking abilities in managing different clinical situations. BACKGROUND The impetus for undertaking this study came from recognition of the need to develop the level of students' critical thinking within clinical nursing practice. Eight videotaped vignettes that simulated clinical situations were developed to promote baccalaureate nursing students' critical thinking abilities in managing clinical situations. Guidelines were also developed to stimulate students' discussion. DESIGN/METHODS A pre-test/post-test design was employed to determine the effectiveness of videotaped vignettes in promoting critical thinking skills among these students. A final sample of 83 students completed all the pre-test and post-test questionnaires on critical thinking skills and nursing knowledge test specific to a vignette. RESULTS/FINDINGS The findings indicate that students' post-test knowledge scores were significantly higher than the pre-test knowledge scores. While the post-test critical thinking skill test scores were slightly higher than those of the pre-test for the students, the difference was not significant. One reason for such findings may be the limited exposure students had to these new types of videotaped vignettes. After the course had been completed both students and teachers were asked to reflect and to indicate their level of satisfaction with the new approach. There was overall satisfaction with the new approach to teaching clinical skills as reflected in the interview data from both teachers and students. CONCLUSIONS While there were positive outcomes in terms of helping students to relate nursing principles to clinical situations, more time for students to learn using videotaped vignette in tutorial hours remains a challenge for teachers in planning the lectures.
Determinants of Political Institutionalization in Black Africa

The characteristic concern of “development” literature is with factors causing (or failing to cause) nation-states of the Third World to behave like “modern” polities. While a myriad of definitions of the concept of political development exists (Pye, 1965; Diamant, 1966) and a plethora of independent variables has been hypothesized to cause this ambiguous concept, it is possible to assemble a set of literature which meshes in providing a testable list of causal variables. For present purposes, we are interested in hypotheses relating to the creation or building of viable political institutions capable of performing some set of functions for and in the social system (Eisenstadt, 1962). In particular, we take as an interesting potential component of development the institutionalization of political party systems as primary tweway transmission belts between publics and government. ’ The research reported here involves an attempt to assess the importance of hypothesized determinants of party system institutionalization in new nations. An examination of literature sufficed to indicate that at least three social phenomena are consistently believed to be influential in affecting
Deep Networks as Models of Human and Animal Categorization

Introduction Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained as classifiers learn by associating visual inputs (e.g., photographs of objects) with appropriate output labels (e.g., “crow”, “dog”, “car”). These complex models, which contain millions of weights, are the state-of-the art in machine vision, rivaling humans in object recognition tasks (LeCun, Bengio, & Hinton, 2015; Krizhevsky, Sutskever, & Hinton, 2012). What these networks learn displays some commonalities with human learning (Kubilius, Bracci, & de Beeck, 2016; Lake, Zaremba, Fergus, & Gureckis, 2015). Furthermore, the layers in these networks have been related to neural activity along the ventral stream (Khaligh-Razavi & Kriegeskorte, 2014; Yamins & DiCarlo, 2016) The similarity spaces created by these models at various network layers allow us to draw parallels with the brain’s neural coding schemes (Guest & Love, 2017). At earlier layers, networks display similarity spaces that reflect the high-level categories found in the input space, e.g., lions and tigers are more similar to one another than to mopeds. At the more advanced layers, similarity structure tends to break down such that representations of different object categories become orthogonal. Can these networks also shed light on how non-human animals categorize? CNNs can be used to determine at what level of representation (i.e., what network layer) animals are coding similarities between images. For example, are animals learning regularities at a very low level, close to the pixels in the image, or are they seizing upon more abstract shape features? In this contribution, we address this question by examining data from pigeons trained to categorize images of cardiograms as normal or abnormal. Pigeons are excellent at classifying visual stimuli (Bhatt, Wasserman, Reynolds, & Knauss, 1988). For example, pigeons trained to discriminate between medical images of nora) b)
Molecular characterization and phylogenetic analyses of a new, highly divergent simian T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (STLV-1marc1) in Macaca arctoides

A serological survey of a captive colony of Asian monkeys indicated that six Macaca arctoides had antibodies to human T-cell leukemia/lymphotropic viruses (HTLV). Over a 4-year interval, sera from these animals continued to exhibit a peculiar Western blot (WB) pattern resembling an HTLV-2 pattern (p24gag reactivity of equal or greater intensity than that of p19gag and a strong reactivity to recombinant gp21) but also exhibiting, in five of six cases, a reactivity against MTA-1, an HTLV-1 gp46 peptide. PCR experiments on DNA extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells using HTLV-1- or HTLV-2-specific long terminal repeat, gag, pol, env, and tax primers yielded negative results. However, highly conserved primers successfully amplified three different gene segments of env, tax, and env-tax. The results of comparative sequence analysis demonstrated that STLV-1marc1 was not closely related to any known STLV-1 strain, was the most divergent strain of the HTLV-1-STLV-1 group, and lacked the ATG initiation codons corresponding to the p12 and p13 proteins of HTLV-1. Phylogenetic analyses incorporating representative strains of all known HTLV-STLV clades consistently depicted STLV-1marc1 within the HTLV-1-STLV-1 type 1 lineage, but it probably diverged early, since its position is clearly different from all known viral strains of this group and it had a bootstrap resampling value of 100%. Genetic distance estimates between STLV-1marc1 and all other type 1 viruses were of the same order of magnitude as those between STLV-2PanP and all other type 2 viruses. In light of the recent demonstration of interspecies transmission of some STLV-1 strains, our results suggest the existence in Asia of HTLV-1 strains related to this new divergent STLV-1marc1 strain, which may be derived from a common ancestor early in the evolution of the type 1 viruses and could be therefore considered a prototype of a new HTLV-STLV clade.
Cost-effectiveness of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass in type 2 diabetes patients.

OBJECTIVE To assess the cost-effectiveness of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass for treating type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in the United States compared with standard medical management, using clinical data from a prospective observational study conducted at an academic medical center. STUDY DESIGN Our study used a predictive health economic model (the CORE Diabetes Model) to project the long-term costs and clinical effectiveness of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass as a treatment for T2DM using the prospective observational study as the basis for our clinical effectiveness assumptions. METHODS The CORE Diabetes Model used Monte Carlo simulation with tracker variables to estimate the lifetime costs and clinical outcomes of Roux-en-Y gastric bypass compared with standard medical management of obese T2DM patients. Sensitivity analyses were performed on key clinical assumptions, discount rates, and shorter time horizons. RESULTS The base-case scenario yielded an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of $21,973 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) gained. In sensitivity analyses, shortening the time horizon to 5 and 10 years and excluding the negative impact of increased body mass index on the patient's quality of life had the greatest adverse impact on the ICERs (ie, higher cost per QALY). CONCLUSIONS Under base-case assumptions, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass is cost-effective in the treatment of T2DM in the United States with an ICER below $50,000 per QALY gained. Sensitivity analyses indicated that bariatric surgery is not cost-effective over shorter time horizons, or if the negative quality-of-life impact of increased body mass index is ignored.
Critical factors of MRP implementation in small and medium‐sized firms

The paper deals with the implementation process of material requirements planning (MRP) within small and medium‐sized firms. While the literature shows almost general agreement on the critical factors of MRP implementation, few empirical studies exist to support the proposed elements. The purpose of this study is to identify the elements of MRP implementation that are required to ensure successful implementation. A number of elements of implementation were identified and subsequently grouped into a hierarchical structure consisting of eight broader elements. Criteria were selected as measures of the level of implementation success. The analysis revealed that only a few of the identified elements were indeed required for successful implementation. Among these are management support, level of functional integration and data accuracy.
Why do Aggregate Production Functions Work? Fisher’s simulations, Shaikh’s identity and some new results

The literature on aggregation has shown that the conditions for successful aggregation of micro production functions into an aggregate production function are far too stringent to be believable (Fisher 1969, 1971). Despite this, aggregate production functions continue being used. The reason is that they seem to 'work'. This happens, however, because underlying every aggregate production function is the income accounting identity that links input and output, i.e. output equals wages plus profits. A simple algebraic transformation of this identity yields a form that resembles a production function (Shaikh, 1974, 1980). This paper uses Monte Carlo simulations to study two questions. First, how much spuriousness can help explain the relatively good fits of the Cobb-Douglas production function? The simulations show that the contribution of spuriousness to a high R 2 is minor once we properly account for the fact that input and output data used in production function estimations are linked through the income accounting identity. It is mostly the link through this identity that explains the results. Secondly, we study how much factor shares have to vary in an economy so as to render the Cobb-Douglas production function with a time trend a bad choice for modelling and estimation purposes. We conclude that the Cobb-Douglas form is robust to relatively large variations in the factor shares. What makes this form often fail are the variations in the growth rates of the wage and profit rates.
Patterns of Quaternary deformation and rupture propagation associated with an active low-angle normal fault, Laguna Salada, Mexico: Evidence of a rolling hinge?

The Laguna Salada rift basin is within the zone of shearing between the Pacific and North American plates and is an asymmetric half-graben controlled on its eastern margin by the Laguna Salada fault and the Canada David detachment. Both faults dip west, have accommodated >10 km of offset since the middle-late Miocene, and are associated with an extensive late Quaternary fault array. The Laguna Salada fault is a high-angle fault that strikes northwest and has an oblique normal-dextral sense of shear. The Canada David detachment is a low-angle normal fault with a curvilinear trace that extends ~55–60 km and contains two prominent megamullion antiform-synform pairs. The late Quaternary scarp array that extends along the entire mountain front shows remarkable variations with antiformal and synformal megamullions. In antiformal domains, the scarp array is generally wider, closer to the mountain front (
Antineuronal antibodies in a heterogeneous group of youth and young adults with tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Antineuronal antibodies have been implicated in tic and obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD) associated with group A streptococcal infections. We investigated antineuronal autoantibody levels as well as antibody-mediated neuronal cell signaling activity, as previously reported for Sydenham chorea and pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococci (PANDAS), to determine immunological profiles for a large cohort of children with tics and/or OCD. METHODS Study participants (n=311; ages 4-27 years, 66% male) were selected from a larger group of individuals with self-reported neuropsychiatric symptoms (n=742) and included only those with accurate knowledge of group A streptococcal infection status, except for four individuals in whom streptococcal infection status was unknown. Healthy control samples (n=16; ages 5-14 years, 81% male), came from the National Institute of Mental Health and Yale University. In addition to serum donations, participants and/or legal guardians provided neuropsychiatric and related medical histories of symptoms that had lasted >1 year. Antineuronal immunoglobulin G (IgG) titers were measured by standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and compared with mean titers of normal age-matched sera against lysoganglioside, tubulin, and dopamine receptors (D1R and D2R). Antibody-mediated signaling of calcium calmodulin dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) activity in a human neuronal cell line (SK-N-SH) was tested in serum. RESULTS Of 311 individuals, 222 (71%) had evidence of group A streptococcal infection, which was associated with tics and/or OCD status (p=0.0087). Sera from individuals with tics and/or OCD (n=261) had evidence of elevated serum IgG antibodies against human D1R (p<0.0001) and lysoganglioside (p=0.0001), and higher serum activation of CaMKII activity (p<0.0001) in a human neuronal cell line compared with healthy controls (n=16). Furthermore, patients with tics and OCD had significantly increased activation of CaMKII activity compared with patients with only tics or only OCD (p<0.033 for each). CONCLUSION Our study suggested a significant correlation of streptococcal-associated tics and OCD with elevated anti-D1R and antilysoganglioside antineuronal antibodies in serum concomitant with higher activation of CaMKII in human neuronal cells. Youth and young adults with chronic tics and OCD may have underlying infectious/immunologic etiology.
Functional Imaging of Single Synapses in Brain Slices

The strength of synaptic connections in the brain is not fixed, but can be modulated by numerous mechanisms. Traditionally, electrophysiology has been used to characterize connections between neurons. Electrophysiology typically reports the activity of populations of synapses, while most mechanisms of plasticity are thought to operate at the level of single synapses. Recently, two‐photon laser scanning microscopy has enabled us to perform optical quantal analysis of individual synapses in intact brain tissue. Here we introduce the basic principle of the two‐photon microscope and discuss its main differences compared to the confocal microscope. Using calcium imaging in dendritic spines as an example, we explain the advantages of simultaneous dual‐dye imaging for quantitative calcium measurements and address two common problems, dye saturation and background fluorescence subtraction.
Performance evaluation of hybrid thin-film versus conventional photovoltaic arrays

This paper evaluates the performance of two solar arrays located in Palm City, Florida. The main goal of this study is to compare the annual performance of a solar array with hybrid Smart-Silicon Thin-Film panels and a conventional solar array. The system was designed and installed for two photovoltaic arrays with the same number of panels that started operation in December 2014. First, an overview of the entire system is presented followed by the description of system architecture design. A statistical comparison is done for system daily and monthly power production. Also, the annual energy output of hybrid and conventional units is extracted and analyzed. At the end, annual power production of each array and the amount of system CO2 emission reduction are calculated. It is concluded from final results that the hybrid solar system has better efficiency in wintertime and performs marginally better than the one with regular solar panels. In order to improve the system efficiency, more precise researches are required in terms of positioning and temperature sensitivity.