Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The allocation of scarce resources: Social housing

Previous studies on the allocation of scarce medical resources have shown that certain patient variables (e.g. sex, age, number of dependants) significantly affect lay participants? rank ordering of them for costly treatment. This study replicates the methodology of these studies (Furnham, Meader, & McClelland, 1999, Furnham, Simmons, & McClelland, 2000) but using allocation to social housing as the dependent variable. One hundred and sixty-three adults rank ordered sixteen people to be allocated a flat from a housing list. The results indicated that whereas gender made no difference in the decision, nonsmokers were favored over smokers, the mentally healthy over the mentally ill; and those with average intelligence over those with high intelligence. These results are comparable to those from studies looking at the allocation of scarce medical resources.
A VARIETIES OF SPURIOUS LONG MEMORY PROCESS

This paper introduces a large varieties of models which can generate a spurious long memory behavior. By using Monte Carlo simulations we have investigated the behavior of the GPH, the Exact Local Whittle and the Wavelet methods when the data generating process is weakly dependent with changes in mean. The results show that these long memory estimation methods fail to accept the null hypothesis of short memory. A strong size distortion have been detected. The results stress the need for a test statistic which can discriminate the true long memory behavior from the spurious behavior. In the empirical applications we use stock returns of seven French companies with the CAC 40 stock market index. We show that the observed long memory behavior is a true behavior and that presence of breaks in these time series do not have a major e ect on the long memory parameter. JEL classi cation: C13;C15,C51
Modern Art in the Old South: The Role of the Arts in Fisk University’s Campus Curriculum

Charles S. Johnson, the first Black president of Fisk, encouraged integration both in the racial sense and through the inclusion of a broader range of experiences within the college curriculum. This article examines Johnson’s understanding of art as a tool for advancement, developed during his years as a promoter of African-American art and literature during the Harlem Renaissance. It explores the ways in which Fisk’s art collection and cultural programs were used, and their intended effect on students and campus life. In particular, the article demonstrates the unique role of these programs in building a sense of identity among students and expanding the worldview of people of varying races and ethnicities.
Expanding HAART Treatment to All Currently Eligible Individuals under the 2008 IAS-USA Guidelines in British Columbia, Canada

Background In 2008, the IAS-USA published the revised guidelines for the use of HAART in adults substantially increasing the number of individuals eligible for HAART. The epidemic in British Columbia (BC) is mainly among men who have sex with men and those with injection drug use. Here, we explored the potential impact of different HAART coverage scenarios, based on the new guidelines, on the HIV-related incidence, morbidity and mortality in BC, Canada. Methodology We built a mathematical transmission model to investigate different HAART coverage scenarios (50%, 60%, 75% and 100%) of those medically eligible to receive HAART under the 2008 IAS guidelines. All new scenarios were compared to the current coverage in BC under the 2006 IAS guidelines (i.e. baseline scenario). In BC, it is estimated that 25–30% of individuals are unaware of their status. Costs were drug-related and reported in Canadian dollars. HIV-related morbidity and mortality were estimated based on the disability-adjusted life years (DALY) methodology. Principal Findings Currently, there are 4379 individuals on HAART under the IAS 2006 guidelines and 6781 individuals who qualify for treatment based on the new guidelines. Within 5 years, increasing HAART coverage decreased yearly new infections by at least 44.8%. In the 50% scenario, in 5 years, DALY decreased by 53% corresponding to 4155 averted DALYs, and in 25 years it decreased by 66% corresponding to 5837 averted DALYs. The effect was even stronger if the 75% scenario was chosen instead. Compared to the 100% expansion scenario, we observed an excess in annual direct treatment expenditures at the end of 5 years of approximately 1 million dollars in the 75% scenario, and of approximately 2 million dollars in the 50% scenario. Conclusions/Significance The individual and public health benefits of these new guidelines are immense. The results show that by increasing the number of individuals on HAART save lives, it is cost averting, and it positively impacts society by decreasing the number of new HIV infections. Thus, public health community should consider incremental gains when considering guidelines and policy.
Minority Stress in the Lives of Men Who Have Sex With Men in Cape Town, South Africa

The mental health outcomes of men who have sex with men (MSM) living in sub-Saharan Africa are understudied, despite evidence that discrimination and stigma are widespread. This article examines the occurrence and mental health effects of minority stress in a sample of diverse South African MSM. Twenty-two MSM living in Cape Town took part in exploratory qualitative in-depth interviews and completed mental health questionnaires. Results indicate that the majority of participants experienced minority stress, which affected their sexual relationships and coping strategies. Concealment behaviors and perceived discrimination levels were high and were associated with race, religion, SES, and geographical location.
Factor Analysis of Rorschach Variables and Behavioral Observation

In a previous article the authors examined a variety of hypotheses concerning the relationship of Rorschach variables and certain behavioral variables (9 ) . Hypotheses were derived from general texts on the Rorschach (8). 5 hypotheses dealt with the total rate R, and were substantiated. The remaining 39 hypotheses had 44 possible tests, among which 23 were found to be in the predicted direction and 21 in the wrong direction, a result which (particularly when coupled to the magnitude of the relationships observed) places an interpreter of the Rorschach on extremely tenuous grounds. 9 of the hypotheses concerned intelligence, and the only 3 statistically significant relationships found involved this variable. It was suggested that while the validity of criteria used might be questioned, the negative findings certainly emphasized the need for additional systematic study. Within the confines of the data, a forward study of the relationships of Rorschach variables to the behavioral variables was indicated. The approach taken and reported here is a Thurstone centroid factor analysis. Wittenborn (16) points out that if discrete scoring variables are not found to have some common variance to external criteria, then the suggested diagnostic use (with a configurational approach) of the Rorschach is questionable. The subsequent attempt by Wittenborn and Holzberg (17) to explore Rorschach scoring categories in relation to symptom manifestations in descriptive diagnosis did not produce encouraging results. Fiske and Baughman ( l o ) , in agreement with Cronbach (6) , conclude on the basis of their systematic analysis of the relationship of R to the scoring categories that scores based on frequencies of response in particular categories are unsatisfactory psychological measures, and concomitantly, that using percentage scores is hardly an adequate solution to the problem.
Defects in Macrophage Recruitment and Host Defense in Mice Lacking the CCR2 Chemokine Receptor

Chemokines are a structurally related family of cytokines that are important for leukocyte trafficking. The C-C chemokine monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) is a potent monocyte activator in vitro and has been associated with monocytic infiltration in several inflammatory diseases. One C-C chemokine receptor, CCR2, has been identified that mediates in vitro responses to MCP-1 and its close structural homologues. CCR2 has also recently been demonstrated to be a fusion cofactor for several HIV isolates. To investigate the normal physiological function of CCR2, we generated mice with a targeted disruption of the ccr2 gene. Mice deficient for CCR2 developed normally and had no hematopoietic abnormalities. However, ccr2 −/− mice failed to recruit macrophages in an experimental peritoneal inflammation model. In addition, these mice were unable to clear infection by the intracellular bacteria, Listeria monocytogenes. These results suggest that CCR2 has a nonredundant role as a major mediator of macrophage recruitment and host defense against bacterial pathogens and that MCP-1 and other CCR2 ligands are effectors of those functions.
Organizational Network Analysis as a Tool for Program Evaluation

Health program evaluation is generally focused on an examination of individual program characteristics and accomplishments, yet many programs are part of a broader service system. Evaluation of the role a program plays in that system is an important evaluation question to address. A network analysis of program referral patterns was used to evaluate Connecticuts Healthy Start program. Network analysis showed that Healthy Start played a "broker" role in 4 case study communities, sending and receiving referrals of pregnant women to a higher than average number of other programs. Further, in the urban area case study, competing market players providing services to pregnant women resulted in subsets of services with dense referral patterns within the subsets, but little referral between subsets. Healthy Start was found to be instrumental as an integrator of these otherwise disconnected service subsets.
DZMQ: A Decentralized Distributed Messaging System for Realtime Web Applications and Services

Message-oriented middleware especially for message queue has been widely used in web applications and services. Performance and scalability are quite essential in these systems however they often become the bottleneck. Existing message queues are not able to scale out elastically very well. This paper presents a decentralized distributed architecture based on peer to peer model, in which we always deliver messages with zero or one hop and take advantage of zero-copy. We implemented a scaling algorithm that can be adapted to the dynamic scale of requests and make the system scale out elastically. A series of workload tests have proved that our system can have low response latency and achieve linear increasing throughput. With these desired properties, the message system can be used to develop large scale web applications and services and provide high-performance services to users.
Symbolic violence, locality and social class: the educational and career aspirations of 10-11-year-old boys in Belfast

Abstract This article is based upon a comparative, ethnographic case study of two groups of 10-11-year-old boys – one middle-class, the other working-class – living in Belfast. Drawing upon Bourdieu's related concepts of symbolic violence and habitus, it shows how locality can help to explain the very different educational and career aspirations found between these two groups of boys. While the local area in which the middle-class boys live had very little significance to them, the working-class boys' locality played a central role in mediating their experiences and perspectives. The article shows how it tended to represent the parameters of the boys' world-view and thus to significantly limit their educational and future career aspirations. The article concludes by arguing that there is a need to move beyond simplistic notions of power based upon crude freedom/constraint dualisms and, instead, to explore the complex ways in which broader processes and structures of inequality are experienced and tend to reach into and affect the very psyche of individuals.
Robust Deformation Transfer via Dual Domain

In this paper, we propose a robust deformation transfer algorithm. Unlike previous work, the transfer process is performed in the dual domain, i.e., the deformations are transferred between the dual meshes of the source and target meshes. Firstly, the source mesh sequence and the target mesh are converted to their dual meshes. Then the source animation is analyzed and represented as a set of affine transformations. After the surface correspondence is built, the transferred result can be reconstructed by dual Laplacian optimization. The experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm is simple but very effective.
Instance-Based Ensemble Pruning via Multi-Label Classification

Ensemble pruning is concerned with the reduction of the size of an ensemble prior to its combination. Its purpose is to reduce the space and time complexity of the ensemble and/or to increase the ensemble's accuracy. This paper focuses on instance-based approaches to ensemble pruning, where a different subset of the ensemble may be used for each different unclassified instance. We propose modeling this task as a multi-label learning problem, in order to take advantage of the recent advances in this area for the construction of effective ensemble pruning approaches. Results comparing the proposed framework against a variety of other instance-based ensemble pruning approaches in a variety of datasets using a heterogeneous ensemble of 200 classifiers, show that it leads to improved accuracy.
Gendlin and ecopsychology: focusing in nature

Gendlin’s focusing emerged from person-centered research and is widely used within person-centered and experiential therapy. An increasing number of people are now practicing focusing in the natural environment. In this paper I develop key aspects of my doctoral research to investigate the significance of this practice. My research suggests that focusing in nature is not only a powerful tool for personal development but that it can also significantly deepen our sense of connection to the natural world. The phenomenological experience of focusing provides a challenge to the idea that every individual is a separate self, a belief that is common amongst adherents of classical person-centered theory. By challenging this notion, focusing in nature adds support to the more relational models of the self found in person-centered and experiential theory and beyond.
Work characteristics and sickness absence in burnout and nonburnout groups: A study of Swedish health care workers.

Ulla PetersonKarolinska InstituteEvangelia DemeroutiUtrecht University and Institute Psychology & HealthGunnar Bergstro ¨mKarolinska InstituteMarie Asberg and Ake NygrenDanderyd HospitalTheaimofthisstudywastosearchforconstellationsofworkcharacteristicsthatdiscriminate people who experience burnout from those who do not, and alsofrom those who score high in exhaustion but not in disengagement, and viceversa. The study is based on data from 3,719 employees in a County Council inSweden. Discriminant analysis revealed that four burnout categories (nonburn-out, disengaged, exhausted, and burnout), related in different ways to self-reported work characteristics. The proportions of respondents with overtime,sickness absence, and sickness presence were higher in the burnout and theexhausted groups compared with the nonburnout group. The most commonprofessions in the burnout group were, unexpectedly, dental nurses, secretaries,and service staff.
Closed-form equations for analytical exploration and comparison of switching power losses in flying capacitor multicell and active neutral-point-clamped multilevel converters

This study presents closed-form formulas in order to analytically calculate, evaluate, and compare the switching power losses in flying capacitor multicell (FCM) and active neutral-point-clamped (ANPC) converters. The equations are derived on the basis of computing the switching instants of the PWM modulator exploiting the Kapteyn (Fourier-Bessel) series. In this regard, the switching power loss investigation is carried out analytically through the derived closed-form equations, and numerically through simulation results. In order to simulate the switching power losses the numeric approach using curve-fitting method is adopted. Comparative analysis and evaluation of the switching power losses are presented for both of the multilevel converters.
Effectiveness of a competence training programme for parents of socially disruptive children

Modern evaluations of parent training programmes seek evidence not only of efficacy in optimal, often university clinic settings, but also of effectiveness under normal field conditions. The Kompetenztraining für Eltern sozial auffälliger Kinder (KES) is a cognitive–behavioural competence training for parents of socially disruptive children. This study tried to complement the investigation of its efficacy by exploring its effectiveness under field conditions. Staff at 14 child guidance centres conducted the training with 88 parents (63.6% mothers; mean age 37.2 years). Effectiveness was assessed by comparing problem behaviour in the child and stress in the family (German versions of Home Situations Questionnaire and Parenting Stress Index) before and after training. Results showed mild to moderate declines in child behaviour problems and moodiness, as well as doubts in the parent role, and stronger effects in more versus less stressed families. Qualitative feedback from the trainers after running the programme was positive. It is concluded that the KES is a sufficiently promising parent training to justify further and more rigorous investigation under field conditions.
Human-like Optimization – A Novel Technique for Computational Design

In the design of many mechanical systems, the human designer knows its topology and shape. The goal for computational design thus results in finding a parameter set that optimizes multiple design goals. This paper presents a novel optimization method for such parametric design, the process of which is based on the human design process, but the search algorithm of which is gradient-based for efficient computation. In sanction with the human design process, the proposed method first searches for multiple solutions or Pareto-optimal solutions, which correspond to the solution space of the multi-objective optimization problem, directly by minimizing multiple objective functions. The proposed method then finds the final design by the center-of-gravity method proposed by the authors, where the closest to the center-of-gravity of the solutions in parameter space becomes the final design. There exist several evolutionary algorithms that can find Pareto-optimal solutions. The performance of the proposed optimization was investigated with numerical examples and compared to a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. The numerical results first demonstrate that the proposed method can search Pareto-optimal solutions only after 20 iterations, which could not be obtained by the evolutionary algorithm even after 500 iterations. The final solution obtained also correlated well with the exact robust solution of the problem. Tomonari Furukawa, Shinobu Yoshimura and Hiroshi Kawai
Online observability optimization for state affine systems with output injection and observer design

Observability being in general subject to the applied input for a nonlinear system, the aim of the present work is to propose an input selection strategy for a special class of systems, so as to make them observable. The considered systems are those admitting a state-affine structure with output injection. For such systems, an online algorithm is proposed to compute an appropriate input in real time. It guarantees observability by ensuring a lower bound on the related Gramian, and minimizes at the same time the input variations with respect to some reference value required for the system operation. This computation is updated at each time with the new output measurements becoming available. The proposed methodology is illustrated on a piping system example, for which an exponential observer is finally obtained.
A Simplex-active-set Algorithm for Piecewise Quadratic Programming †

An algorithm for monotropic piecewise quadratic programming is developed. It converges to an exact solution in finitely many iterations and can be thought of as an extension of the simplex method for convex programming and the active set method for quadratic programming. Computational results show that solving a piecewise quadratic program is not much harder than solving a quadratic program of the same number of variables. In other words, the computation time is not sensitive to the increase of ”pieces”.
Computer simulations of morphologically reconstructed CA3 hippocampal neurons.

1. We tested several hypotheses with respect to the mechanisms and processes that control the firing characteristics and determine the spatial and temporal dynamics of intracellular Ca2+ in CA3 hippocampal neurons. In particular, we were interested to know 1) whether bursting and nonbursting behavior of CA3 neurons could be accounted for in a morphologically realistic model using a number of the known ionic conductances; 2) whether such a model is robust across different cell morphologies; 3) whether some particular nonuniform distribution of Ca2+ channels is required for bursting; and 4) whether such a model can reproduce the magnitude and spatial distribution of intracellular Ca2+ transients determined from fluorescence imaging studies and can predict reasonable intracellular Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) distribution for CA3 neurons. 2. For this purpose we have developed a highly detailed model of the distribution and densities of membrane ion channels in hippocampal CA3 bursting and nonbursting pyramidal neurons. This model reproduces both the experimentally observed firing modes and the dynamics of intracellular Ca2+. 3. The kinetics of the membrane ionic conductances are based on available experimental data. This model incorporates a single Na+ channel, three Ca2+ channels (CaN, CaL, and CaT), three Ca(2+)-independent K+ channels (KDR, KA, and KM), two Ca(2+)-dependent K+ channels (KC and KAHP), and intracellular Ca(2+)-related processes such as buffering, pumping, and radial diffusion. 4. To test the robustness of the model, we applied it to six different morphologically accurate reconstructions of CA3 hippocampal pyramidal neurons. In every neuron, Ca2+ channels, Ca(2+)-related processes, and Ca(2+)-dependent K+ channels were uniformly distributed over the entire cell. Ca(2+)-independent K+ channels were placed on the soma and the proximal apical dendrites. For each reconstructed cell we were able to reproduce bursting and nonbursting firing characteristics as well as Ca2+ transients and distributions for both somatic and synaptic stimulations. 5. Our simulation results suggest that CA3 pyramidal cell bursting behavior does not require any special distribution of Ca(2+)-dependent channels and mechanisms. Furthermore, a simple increase in the Ca(2+)-independent K+ conductances is sufficient to change the firing mode of our CA3 neurons from bursting to nonbursting. 6. The model also displays [Ca2+]i transients and distributions that are consistent with fluorescent imaging data. Peak [Ca2+]i distribution for synaptic stimulation of the nonbursting model is broader when compared with somatic stimulation. Somatic stimulation of the bursting model shows a broader distribution in [Ca2+]i when compared with the nonbursting model. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)