Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
[Chronological evaluation of physical, psychological and social health of urban elderly dwellers over 6 years and assessment of causal inter-relationships].

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study is to make a chronological evaluation over 6 years of physical, psychological and social health of urban elderly dwellers. METHODS A questionnaire survey was conducted with all urban elderly dwellers of 65 years old or more in A City in September, 2001. Answers were obtained from 13,195 people (response rate of 80.2%) in the first survey. Then 3 year and 6 year follow-up surveys of 2,375 members were performed in September 2004 and 2007. Causal relationships were analyzed using a Structural Equation Model based on the Cross-Lagged Effects Variation Model. RESULTS According to this research, a chronological six year trend in ADL (Activities of Daily Living) was found for "physical factor" (" " means latent variable) as an observed variable, with a shifted from 91.0% to 82.9%. A trend for self-rated health with healthy as an observed variable of "psychological factor" was similarly apparent, shifting from 85.4% to 77.0%. "Social factor" conducted on the follow-up survey in 2007 was significantly affected by the "psychological factor" investigated in 2001 and "physical factor" in the follow-up survey in 2004, indirectly based on the Cross-Lagged Effects Variation Model. "Social factor" totals of 25% for men and 19% for women were explained by this model with high validity levels (NFI = 0.935, IFI = 0.950, RMSEA = 0.036). CONCLUSION It was suggested that social health was affected by psychological health directly and physical health indirectly during six years follow-up of urban elderly dwellers. Future research is needed to encompass other generations and also to improve the external validity of the results.
Value relevance of R&D in the UK after IFRS mandatory implementation

Following International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mandatory adoption in 2005, the criteria determining the accounting treatment of Research and Development (R&D) expenditure have changed for UK listed companies that publish consolidated financial statements. Therefore, recent literature raises concerns about the value relevance of R&D assets and expenses in the UK, after 2005. Using very recent data, we respond to these calls for research. Adding to the absence of prior evidence regarding the pre-IFRS period, we find that the capitalized portion of R&D is significantly positively related to market values, suggesting that the market perceives these items as successful projects with future economic benefits. R&D expenses are significantly negatively related to market values under IFRS, supporting the proposition that they reflect no future economic benefits and thus they should be expensed. Also in contrast with evidence regarding the pre-IFRS period, R&D expenses are negatively value relevant only for large companies. Accordingly, we argue that transition to IFRS does have implications on the valuation of R&D expenditure in the UK.
A framework for the kinematic modeling of soft material robots combining finite element analysis and piecewise constant curvature kinematics

Recent advances in the rapidly growing field of soft robotics have shown that robots made from soft materials surpass traditional rigid-link and continuum robots in performance in terms of adaptability and flexibility. Owing to their structure-inherent compliance, soft robots are also credited with being able to bridge the gap between humans and autonomous machines. However, for soft robots to become mass-producible in future days, rapid design and modeling tools are indispensable. Currently, the need for fast and versatile development tools is contradicted by a design flow that is mainly driven by experiments. To counter the perceived gap between experimentally and simulation driven research in soft robotics, we have developed a finite element based kinematic modeling framework for soft continuum robots that is applicable to a range of different designs. The corresponding design and modeling tool effectively combines the capabilities of both MATLAB and Abaqus via a Python interface. In this paper, we provide detailed description of the developed methodology and demonstrate the feasibility of the approach on a soft pneumatic actuator.
Ferromagnetic Resonance Studies of Coupled Magnetic Systems

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Genetic Algorithm Approach for Improved Design of a Variable Speed Axial-Flux Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Generator

Optimal design for an axial-flux permanent magnet synchronous generator (AFPMSG) using genetic algorithm (GA) is presented, and the condition for minimum active material cost is deduced. A computer-aided design procedure based on the results of the GA is proposed. In the design procedure the practical and performance characteristics are taken into account as some restrictions for the object function used in the optimization algorithm. A 30-kW AFPMSG with two parallel connected stators and rotor-surface PMs is designed using the developed program, and then 3-D finite-element analyses are carried out to validate the design procedure.
All-dielectric frequency selective surfaces based on dielectric resonators

Frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) are planar structures composed of a periodic array of unit cells that filter electromagnetic (EM) waves impinging on the surfaces. They have been widely used in stealth technology, electromagnetic countermeasure, and communication systems [1, 2]. Typical FSSs are composed of metallic grids or dipole arrays, which exploit the strong interactions between EM waves and metals. However, metals are problematic at very high incident power. Strong currents in the conductors will incur severe heating due to ohmic losses; arcing will occur at field concentration points [3]. Besides, metal materials are not quite favorable for high-temperature resistance and corrosion-resistant requirements. Consider that dielectrics exhibit a much weaker interaction with the field than metals do, all-dielectric FSSs (ADFSSs) make better alternative. Recently, J. H. Barton et al. [4] developed an ADFSS based on guided-mode resonance (GMR), which extended the fractional bandwidth of conventional GMR devices from 1% to 16%, and could survive with no damage at a high pulsed microwave power of 1.7GW/m2. In 2015, they presented another novel ADFSS using genetic algorithms and fast Fourier transforms [5], which exhibited a larger fractional bandwidth. Both of the designs have a total height about λ0/3 (λ0 is the center wavelength of the operating EM waves). In optical region, subwavelength dielectric granules that possess strong Mie resonances are often used to fabricate metamaterials. Recently, a single-negative all-dielectric metamaterial, which is comprised of a single layer of cylindrical silicon resonators on a silicon-on-insulator substrate, is experimentally proved to possess broadband perfect reflection in the infrared region [6].
Risk factors for superficial wound complications in hip and knee arthroplasty.

Superficial wound complications have been consistently implicated in the development of prosthetic joint infection. This cohort study aimed to determine perioperative risk factors associated with superficial wound complications. The study was performed over an 18-month period (January 2011 to June 2012) and included 964 patients undergoing prosthetic hip or knee replacement surgery. The factors associated with superficial wound complication differed according to arthroplasty site. In the combined cohort the following factors were associated with superficial wound complications: the use of 0.5% chlorhexidine in 70% alcohol for surgical skin preparation compared with 1% iodine in 70% alcohol (odds ratio (OR) 4.75; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.42, 15.92; p = 0.012); increasing age (OR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.06,1.19; p 0.18); increasing body mass index (BMI) (OR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.05,1.12; p < 0.001); rheumatoid arthritis (OR, 2.56; 95% CI, 1.17, 5.58; p 0.018); and increasing blood transfusions (OR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.06,1.49; p 0.008). In the hip arthroplasty cohort, the use of 0.5% chlorhexidine in 70% alcohol for surgical skin preparation (OR, 13.35; 95% CI, 2.11, 84.29; p 0.006), increasing BMI (OR, 1.13; 95% CI, 1.06, 1.19; p < 0.001) and increasing blood transfusions (OR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.06, 1.49; p 0.008) were associated with superficial wound complications. In the knee arthroplasty cohort rheumatoid arthritis (OR, 2.75; 95% CI, 1.03, 7.33; p 0.043) and increasing tourniquet time (OR, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00, 1.02; p = 0.029) were independent predictors of superficial wound complications. Further research is warranted to assess the impact of modification of these factors on the subsequent development of wound complications and prosthetic joint infection.
Domains‐based Outcomes Assessment of Continuing Medical Education: The VA's Model

Demonstrating outcomes of continuing medical education (CME) efforts has become increasingly important to CME providers, accrediting organizations, and licensing bodies. Many CME providers have difficulty defining the nature of the outcomes, much less documenting the outcomes for which they are responsible. The vague nature of the terms “outcome,” “impact,” or “result” in the complexity of health care and medical education environments is a particular obstacle to many education providers. To overcome these barriers, the VA's Employee Education System (EES), a large CME provider, created a model identifying five major domains of possible outcomes for CME interventions; these are the domains of individual participants, employee teams, the larger organization, patients, and the community. These domains are useful in either assessing a single CME activity's outcomes or comprehensively assessing a CME provider's outcomes-assessment strategy. The use of such a domains-based outcomes-management strategy links organizational mission, needs assessment, specific activity assessment, and assessment of the overall education program. This approach may be useful to CME providers, accrediting and licensing bodies, or others interested in the relationship of CME outcomes to the activities of CME providers.
Sharing China's Bank Restructuring Bill

This paper addresses the questions related to the cost of China’s bank restructuring and how it has been financed. We first propose a framework for recognizing losses. Then, we examine the recent major moves by the Chinese Government to repair the country’s bank balance sheets. Finally, we explore the implications of the Chinese Government’s methods of funding bank restructuring. We find that the Chinese Government has been decisive in confronting the costly task of bank restructuring. So far, Chinese taxpayers have paid most of the bill for bank restructuring.
Designing Festival Experiences to Influence Visitor Perceptions: The Case of a Wine and Food Festival

An activity that has been found to enhance wine tourism opportunities is wine and food festivals.This article examines how, through the manipulation of such festival attributes, festival managers can foster positive consumer perceptions of products central to the festival. The article first describes the attributes that define a festival and then, using the Moonlight Wine Tour festival as a case for study, explores how much of an influence certain festival attributes have on shaping visitors’ perceptions of the wine on show. An ANOVA determines that five festival attributes are effective predictors of creating positive changes in people’s perceptions, while one attribute has a negative effect. A binomial generalized linear model is then created for use in managerial situations by specifying which combined set of attributes are the most significant in creating positive and negative changes in consumer perceptions.
Integration of Growth Factor, Extracellular Matrix, and Retinoid Signals during Bronchial Epithelial Cell Differentiation

ABSTRACT Epithelial cell differentiation is regulated by specific combinations of growth factors, hormones, and extracellular matrix (ECM). How these divergent signals are integrated is largely unknown. We used primary cultures of normal human bronchial epithelial cells (NHBEs) to investigate mechanisms of signal integration. In defined, serum-free media, NHBEs undergo mucosecretory differentiation only when grown in the presence of retinoids and on the appropriate substratum (collagen gels). We identified the retinoic acid receptor β (RARβ) gene as an early marker of NHBE differentiation. In contrast to immortalized cell lines, in NHBEs strong retinoid-induced RARβ transcription occurs only when cells are grown on collagen gels, and it requires new protein synthesis and a cis-acting element that maps outside the known RARβ promoter elements. NHBEs grown on collagen gels exhibit reduced epidermal growth factor (EGF)-induced Raf, MEK, and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activity. This correlates with a specific inability to achieve high levels of p66SHC tyrosyl phosphorylation and association of p66SHC with GRB2, despite high levels of EGF receptor (EGFR) autophosphorylation. Notably, inhibition of EGFR or MEK/MAPK activation replaces the ECM requirement for RARβ induction. Our results strongly suggest that a key mechanism by which specific ECMs facilitate retinoid-induced mucosecretory differentiation of NHBEs is by restricting the level of EGFR-dependent MEK/MAPK activation evoked by autocrine and/or paracrine EGFR ligands.
The output eect of …scal consolidation plans

The present paper argues that the correct experiment to evaluate the eects of a …scal adjustment is the simulation of …scal plans rather than of individual …scal shocks. The simulation of the …scal plans adopted by 16 OECD countries over a 30-year period supports the hypothesis that the eects of consolidations depend on their design. Fiscal adjustments based upon spending cuts are much less costly, in terms of output losses, than tax-based ones. Fiscal adjustments have especially low output costs when they consist of permanent rather than stop and go. The dierence cannot be explained by accompanying policies, including monetary policy, and appears to be mainly due to the dierent response of business con…dence and private investment.
Confirmatory factor analyses on non–normal panel data: an application to banking

Factor analysis of multivariate longitudinal data are discussed, where measurements are taken from individuals at several occasions. Unbalanced cases, in which some individuals do not appear at all occasions and the number of measured individuals may change from one occasion to another, are considered. For such cases, the full likelihood method is difficult even if a particular distribution is assumed. In this paper, a relatively simple method based on a partial likelihood is considered, and is shown to have various advantages over the full likelihood method and the time–series modelling. It is shown that the associated inference procedures, including the goodness–of–fit statistic, have a good asymptotic performance for a broad class of non–normal data having any time trend. The proposed method is compared with standard methods using real data from the banking sector.
Tartan: Accelerating Fully-Connected and Convolutional Layers in Deep Learning Networks by Exploiting Numerical Precision Variability

Tartan (TRT), a hardware accelerator for inference with Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), is presented and evaluated on Convolutional Neural Networks. TRT exploits the variable per layer precision requirements of DNNs to deliver execution time that is proportional to the precision p in bits used per layer for convolutional and fully-connected layers. Prior art has demonstrated an accelerator with the same execution performance only for convolutional layers. Experiments on image classification CNNs show that on average across all networks studied, TRT outperforms a state-of-the-art bit-parallel accelerator by 1:90x without any loss in accuracy while it is 1:17x more energy efficient. TRT requires no network retraining while it enables trading off accuracy for additional improvements in execution performance and energy efficiency. For example, if a 1% relative loss in accuracy is acceptable, TRT is on average 2:04x faster and 1:25x more energy efficient than a conventional bit-parallel accelerator. A Tartan configuration that processes 2-bits at time, requires less area than the 1-bit configuration, improves efficiency to 1:24x over the bit-parallel baseline while being 73% faster for convolutional layers and 60% faster for fully-connected layers is also presented.
NONPARAMETRIC AND SEMIPARAMETRIC METHODS FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH

Developments in the vast and growing literatures on nonparametric and semiparametric statistical estimation are reviewed. The emphasis is on useful methodology--rather than statistical properties for their own sake. Some empirical applications to economic data are described. The paper deals separately with nonparametric density estimation, nonparametric regression estimation, and estimation of semiparametric models. Copyright 1992 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd
EVALUATION OF ACCELERATION TECHNIQUES FOR THE RESTARTED ARNOLDI METHOD

We present an approach for the acceleration of the restarted Arnoldi iteration for the computation of a number of eigenvalues of the standard eigenproblem Ax = λx. This study applies the Chebyshev polynomial to the restarted Arnoldi iteration and proves that it computes necessary eigenvalues with far less complexity than the QR method. We also discuss the dependence of the convergence rate of the restarted Arnoldi iteration on the distribution of spectrum. This research aims to compare this algorithm with other state-of-the-art approaches.
Using features from tumor subregions of breast DCE-MRI for estrogen receptor status prediction

In breast cancer, tumor heterogeneity is a reflection of differing tumor subtypes, which may display markedly different genotypes and clinical phenotypes. Although pathological and qualitative (based on contrast enhancement patterns) studies suggest the presence of clinical and molecular predictive tumor subregions, this has not been fully investigated. Our goal is to develop a novel algorithm to utilize the potential information available in different tumor subregions (periphery and core) by extracting textural kinetic features, for the purpose of estrogen receptor (ER) classification. We show that features from different tumor subregions, at appropriate scales and quantization levels, can be used to better classify ER subtypes than features averaged from the whole tumor. We analyzed representative two dimensional (2D) slices from twenty breast tumors with volumetric dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) available by extracting multi-parametric textural kinetic features from the periphery, core and whole tumor. The utility of the features from different subregions are evaluated using six meta-classifiers (feature selector and classifier pairs), formed from two feature selectors and three classifiers. Classification accuracy approached 94%.
Stereo System for Real-Time Pose Tracking

Here we describe a stereo camera system capable of tracking a single subject through a series of dynamic poses in real time. Our system is capable of estimating the 5 key points of the person’s pose (head, feet, hands) as well as their center of gravity. All of this is accomplished using two passive cameras running on commodity laptop hardware. We provide a geometric description of the setup which precludes the requirement for disparity calculations. We also provide implementation details and experimental results, including videos of the system at work. Finally, a number of interesting applications and directions for future work are identified.
Extension of research data repository system to support direct compute access to biomedical datasets: enhancing Dataverse to support large datasets

Access to experimental X‐ray diffraction image data is important for validation and reproduction of macromolecular models and indispensable for the development of structural biology processing methods. In response to the evolving needs of the structural biology community, we recently established a diffraction data publication system, the Structural Biology Data Grid (SBDG, data.sbgrid.org), to preserve primary experimental datasets supporting scientific publications. All datasets published through the SBDG are freely available to the research community under a public domain dedication license, with metadata compliant with the DataCite Schema (schema.datacite.org). A proof‐of‐concept study demonstrated community interest and utility. Publication of large datasets is a challenge shared by several fields, and the SBDG has begun collaborating with the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University to extend the Dataverse (dataverse.org) open‐source data repository system to structural biology datasets. Several extensions are necessary to support the size and metadata requirements for structural biology datasets. In this paper, we describe one such extension—functionality supporting preservation of file system structure within Dataverse—which is essential for both in‐place computation and supporting non‐HTTP data transfers.
Fat Distribution in HIV-Infected Women in the United States: DEXA Substudy in the Women's Interagency HIV Study

Surveys in HIV-infected men on antiretroviral therapy (ART) consistently demonstrate decreased levels of peripheral fat, with variable effects on central fat. This substudy of the Women's Interagency HIV Study was undertaken to examine fat distribution in a well-characterized cohort of HIV-positive and HIV-negative women in the United States. Whole-body dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry scanning with standardized regional analysis was performed in 271 nonpregnant women. Results were compared in the following groups: HIV negative (n = 88); and HIV positive on no ART (n = 70), highly active ART with a protease inhibitor (HAART/PI) (n = 48), or non-PI-containing HAART (n = 53). The groups were well matched with respect to race, with the majority of women coming from racial/ethnic minorities. The majority of both HIV-positive and HIV-negative women were overweight (body mass index [BMI] ≥25 kg/m2), and many were obese (BMI >30 kg/m2). Leg fat in both groups on HAART was significantly lower than in HIV-negative women (P = 0.01 and <0.0001 vs. HIV-negative for HAART/PI and HAART/no PI, respectively), whereas trunk fat was lower only in HAART/no PI (P = 0.0004 vs. HIV-negative). Thus, consistent with reports in men, lower levels of peripheral (leg) fat are seen in HIV-infected women on HAART, despite the high prevalence of obesity in this population.
Infrequent Shocks, Output Persistence and Economic Growth

The robustness of the relationship between the persistence of output fluctuations and trend growth is evaluated. The analysis introduces discontinuities in output processes and examines the role of convergence across countries. Breaking trends influence the world distribution of permanent shocks and evidence is presented on persistent differences in output patterns associated with both the catching-up process and technological progress. Overall, a positive correlation between output persistence and growth is confirmed. These results indicate that documenting and interpreting how the characteristics of the business cycle are related to long-run growth is an important topic that deserves further attention in the profession.