Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forecasting Employment for Germany

This paper deals with the estimation of employment equations for Germany, which are to be used for forecasting and simulation purposes. The authors estimate both single and system error correction equations for German working hours using quarterly raw data covering the period 1980:1-2004:2. Since the focus is on the question whether German reunification has affected or even modified the underlying economic relationships, the authors compare the results to those reported in previous studies for West Germany and Germany, respectively. The authors find that the elasticity of employment with respect to output is robustly estimated and can therefore be restricted to one. The elasticity of employment with respect to the real wage, however, is affected by German reunification and relative factor prices no longer play a significant role. The forecasting quality of the employment equation is satisfactory.
Intra-household Differences in Education and Home Leaving in Indonesia

This paper investigates some of the underlying factors determining the probability of household division, defined here as the event when an adult leaves his or her original household, utilizing data from two waves of the IFLS (IFLS1-1993 and IFLS3-2000). Borrowing the empirical framework suggested by Foster and Rosenzweig (2002), I estimate the probability of household division by the subsequent waves of the survey, using household variables from an earlier wave as the explanatory variables. The findings suggest that education variables play an important albeit limited role in determining household division. There is evidence that higher education of the household head is associated with lower propensity of an adult household member to leave. On the other hand, higher maximum years of schooling of other members in the household are associated with higher probability of household division. These results, along with the finding showing that rural households are more likely to divide, indicate that household division in Indonesia may largely be associated with the mobility of young, more educated members from rural areas. While the empirical framework is based on a collective household model, the results can also be explained within the context of unitary household model.
Nucleoside Modification and Concerted Mutagenesis of the Human A3 Adenosine Receptor to Probe Interactions Between the 2-Position of Adenosine Analogs and Gln167 in the Second Extracellular Loop

Residues of the second extracellular loop are believed to be important for ligand recognition in adenosine receptors. Molecular modeling studies have suggested that one such residue, Gln 167 of the human A 3 receptor, is in proximity to the C2 moiety of some adenosine analogs when bound. Here this putative interaction was systematically explored using a neoceptor strategy, i.e., by site-directed mutagenesis and examination of the affinities of nucleosides modified to have complementary functionality. Gln 167 was mutated to Ala, Glu, and Arg, while the 2-position of several adenosine analogs was substituted with amine or carboxylic acid groups. All compounds tested lost affinity to the mutant receptors in comparison to the wild type. However, comparing affinities among the mutant receptors, several compounds bearing charge at the 2-position demonstrated preferential affinity for the mutant receptor bearing a residue of complementary charge. 13, with a positively-charged C2 moiety, displayed an 8.5-fold increase in affinity at the Q167E mutant receptor versus the Q167R mutant receptor. Preferential affinity for specific mutant receptors was also observed for 8 and 12. The data suggests that a direct contact is made between the C2 substituent of some charged ligands and the mutant receptor bearing the opposite charge at position 167.
Complex question answering based on a semantic domain model of clinical medicine

Much research in recent years has focused on question answering. Due to significant advances in answering simple fact-seeking questions, research is moving towards resolving complex questions. An approach adopted by many researchers is to decompose a complex question into a series of fact-seeking questions and reuse techniques developed for answering simple questions. This thesis presents an alternative novel approach to domain-specific complex question answering based on consistently applying a semantic domain model to question and document understanding as well as to answer extraction and generation. This study uses a semantic domain model of clinical medicine to encode (a) a clinician's information need expressed as a question on the one hand and (b) the meaning of scientific publications on the other to yield a common representation. It is hypothesized that this approach will work well for (1) finding documents that contain answers to clinical questions and (2) extracting these answers from the documents. The domain of clinical question answering was selected primarily because of its unparalleled resources that permit providing a proof by construction for this hypothesis. In addition, a working prototype of a clinical question answering system will support research in informed clinical decision making. The proposed methodology is based on the semantic domain model developed within the paradigm of Evidence Based Medicine. Three basic components of this model---the clinical task, a framework for capturing a synopsis of a clinical scenario that generated the question, and strength of evidence presented in an answer---are identified and discussed in detail. Algorithms and methods were developed that combine knowledge-based and statistical techniques to extract the basic components of the domain model from abstracts of biomedical articles. These algorithms serve as a foundation for the prototype end-to-end clinical question answering system that was built and evaluated to test the hypotheses. Evaluation of the system on test collections developed in the course of this work and based on real life clinical questions demonstrates feasibility of complex question answering and high accuracy information retrieval using a semantic domain model.
Effects of Imported Intermediate Varieties on Plant Total Factor Productivity and Product Switching: Evidence from Korean Manufacturing

By utilizing previously unexplored plant–product data on Korean manufacturing, and detailed import data for 1991–1998, this paper empirically investigates whether greater access to imported intermediate varieties enhanced plant total factor productivity and product-switching behavior. First, consistent with previous empirical studies, we find that a plant that belonged to industries with higher imported intermediate variety growth experienced higher productivity growth. Second, our empirical results suggest that increased imported intermediate varieties stimulated the product-switching behavior of domestic plants. Because product-switching behavior (i.e. simultaneously adding and dropping products) could be understood as a part of the continual process of ‘creative destruction’ within plants, our results imply that imported intermediate variety growth may be one of the channels through which resource reallocation within plants can be promoted.
Produttività e concorrenza estera

In Italy the debate on the recent growth slowdown has focused on the increased competitive pressures by developing countries in sectors where Italy used to own a revealed comparative advantage. This paper aims at quantifying explicitly the effects of such pressures on the productivity of firms and manufacturing sectors in Italy by relying on the exogenous nature of the entry of firms located in developing countries into world markets. We find a positive causal impact of developing countries' world market shares on sectoral productivity, mostly due to a creative destruction process with the exit of less efficient firms and the entry of more efficient ones.
The Godin-Shephard Leisure-Time Physical Activity Questionnaire: Validity Evidence Supporting its Use for Classifying Healthy Adults into Active and Insufficiently Active Categories

This study provided validity evidence for the Godin-Shephard Leisure-Time Physical Activity Questionnaire (GSLTPAQ) to classify respondents into active and insufficiently active categories. Members of a fitness center [45 women and 55 men; mean (SD) age = 45.5 (10.6) yr. ] completed the questionnaire. Using only moderate and strenuous scores, those with a leisure score index ≥ 24 were classified as active; those with a score ≤ 23 were classified as insufficiently active. VO2max, percentage of body fat, and electronic records of fitness center attendance were the validation variables. In a visit to the fitness center, participants completed the GSLTPAQ and a certified exercise specialist performed a physical fitness evaluation. A multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) indicated the group of respondents classified as active had higher VO2max and lower percentage of body fat than the group of respondents classified as insufficiently active. An analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) indicated the group of respondents classified as active had higher electronic records of fitness center attendance than the group of respondents classified as insufficiently active. Therefore, these pieces of validity evidence support the use of the questionnaire's classification system among healthy adults.
A Short-Text Oriented Clustering Method for Hot Topics Extraction

A major challenge in document clustering is the extremely high dimensionality as well as the sparsity of the sample matrix. In this paper, we propose a new short-text oriented analysis approach to cluster short text automatically and extract the hot topics from each cluster. Different from the previous studies focused on long text, our analysis approach mainly focused on short-text cases. The approach consists of three stages: Firstly, generate feature vector for each sample so as to obtain the whole high-dimensional Vector Space Model; Secondly, use Singular Value Decomposition to achieve the dimensions reduction; Lastly, apply cosine similarity and k-means method to cluster samples on the low-dimensional matrix and extract the hot topics for each cluster. The experimental results show that our analysis approach can deal with the short-text samples and find out the hot topics efficiently and effectively.
An innovative treatment concept for free flap reconstruction of complex central chest wall defects—The cephalic‐thoraco‐acromial (CTA) loop

Background: Loco‐regional flaps are the method of choice for chest wall reconstruction. However there is a selected group of patients who require free flap reconstruction, when all other options are used up. A small subgroup of these patients was identified where the commonly used recipient vessels (Internal mammary A. + V., Thoraco‐dorsal A. + V.) were no longer available. Patient and method: This group comprised 16 seriously ill patients in the period from 2000 to 2004. Underlying diseases were sternum osteomyelitis (10×), tumor (2×), and osteo‐radionecrosis (4×). There were 10 women and 6 men with mean age 62.4 years. All patients were classified as ASA III and IV. Fourteen patients received a TFL flap, two patients a vertical rectus myocutaneuos flap (VRAM). Recipient vessels were created with a temporary A‐V loop between the cephalic vein and the thoraco‐acromial artery (CTA‐loop). Results: No flap was lost and two had to be revised successfully for thrombosis of the arterial anastomosis. Mean operation time was 6.1 (4.7–8.4) h. Average time for ventilatory support was 56 (4–338) h. Five patients died within 6 months postoperatively due their underlying advanced disease (n = 3) or multiple organ failure (n = 2). Conclusion: The new concept of creating recipient vessels for free flap reconstruction of complex thoracic wall defects proved to be safe and reliable. The CTA loop allowed for unhurried flap dissection, best possible flap positioning, and straightforward end–end anstomoses in these seriously sick patients. The outcome with respect to complications and survival justifies the operative effort. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. Microsurgery, 2007.
Farm size and productivity in Malawian smallholder agriculture

This article contributes to the limited literature on farm size and productivity in smallholder agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. Farm survey data, and the results from a linear programming farm-household model, provide evidence for a positive relationship between farm size and productivity in both labour-scarce and land-scarce smallholder farming in Malawi during the 1980's. The absence of an inverse relationship is explained in terms of failures in land, capital and produce markets with acute capital constraints, which affect both capital and labour inputs on smaller farms. Implications for rural development policies are discussed.
The Gradual Defederalization of Canadian Health Policy

Health policy is an important facet of territorial politics, drawing the contours of the sharing community. Changes in the management of the division of powers in health policy point to shifting understandings of the federal political community. This article adopts this approach in the Canadian case, where observers disagree about whether values of federal diversity remain robust or are eroding. It considers three Commissions (Rowell-Sirois, Hall, and Romanow) reporting over a 60-year time span. The Commissions adopt different understandings of the division of powers and of the proper forms of intergovernmental health governance, moving from a robust understanding of federal diversity and the division of powers in the 1940s, to an afederal emphasis on efficiency and pan-Canadian citizenship in the early 2000s. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.
A Note on Capacity Utilization and Measurement of Scale Economies

This article investigates the measurement of returns to scale (RTS) via a cost function in the presence of quasi-fixed inputs. Caves, Christensen, and Swanson (CCS) proposed estimation of a variable-cost function and derived a formula for computing RTS from it. This article extends the CCS results by (1) investigating the bias that would result from erroneously using a total-cost function for measuring RTS, (2) indicating that the CCS procedure for measuring scale economies in the presence of quasi-fixed inputs is inconsistent for the case of nonhomothetic production technology, and (3) proposing an alternative procedure that allows one to evaluate RTS at long-run equilibrium points, even when firms in the sampler are disequilibrium. The similarity between this proposed method and the "temporary" equilibrium approach for measuring productivity growth is noted as well. The empirical results on RTS are compared among the three alternstive moethods (total-cost, CCS variable-cost, and proposed long-run equilibrium.
Visible LED wireless optical transmission in optical access network using electroabsorption transceiver

Visible light emitting diode (LED) wireless system based on the existing optical access network is proposed for the first time. Electroabsorption transceiver (EAT) is used to construct LED wireless optical link with optical access network. 5Mbps downlink and uplink transmission is verified through 23Km standard single mode fiber (SSMF) and 40cm wireless channel experimentally.
Co-occurring intimate partner violence, mental health, and substance use problems: a scoping review

Background Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a pervasive, serious problem detrimental to the health of untold numbers of women. In addition to physical injuries that may be sustained, IPV has been significantly associated with mental health challenges including substance use problems. The problems are complex, highly correlated with each other, and bidirectional in nature. Although as many as 50% of women in mental health and between 25% and 50% of women in substance abuse treatment programs report IPV, frontline workers in all three sectors state they lack the training to address these co-occurring problems. Objective To determine what frontline IPV, mental health, and substance use workers need to know in order to provide appropriate care to women experiencing co-occurring IPV, mental health and/or substance use problems. Design Using Scholars Portal OVID, Medline and OVID PsycINFO and combinations of significant terms, we conducted a scoping review of articles published between 2005 and 2014. Results An initial 4017 records were retrieved (3484 from Scholars Portal, 272 from Medline, 261 from PsycINFO). After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 35 articles were reviewed. Of these, 14 examined the relationships among IPV, mental health, and substance use; 7 focused on IPV and mental health; 14 looked at IPV and substance use. Conclusions Although education and training frequently figured among the recommendations in the reviewed articles, specific content for proposed education or training was lacking. The most frequently occurring recommendations focused on the need to develop better collaboration, coordination, and integration across IPV, mental health and addiction treatment services.
Modelling organelle transport after traumatic axonal injury

This paper is motivated by recent experimental research (Tang-Schomer et al. 2012) on the formation of periodic varicosities in axons after traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI leads to the formation of undulated distortions in the axons due to their dynamic deformation. These distortions result in the breakage of some microtubules (MTs) near the peaks of undulations. The breakage is followed by catastrophic MT depolymerisation around the broken ends. Although after relaxation axons regain their straight geometry, the structure of the axon after TBI is characterised by the presence of periodic regions where the density of MTs has been decreased due to depolymerisation. We modelled organelle transport in an axon segment with such a damaged MT structure and investigated how this structure affects the distributions of organelle concentrations and fluxes. The modelling results suggest that organelles accumulate at the boundaries of the region where the density of MTs has been decreased by depolymerisation. According to the model, the presence of such damaged regions decreases the organelle flux by only about 12%. This provides evidence that axon degradation after TBI may be caused by organelle accumulation rather than by starvation due to insufficient organelle flux.
Ontogeny of Brain Neurotensin in the Rat: A Radioimmunoassay Study

Abstract: Concentrations of neurotensin‐like immunoreactivity in several discrete brain areas were measured by radioimmunoassay in rats of different ages (2, 5, 10,20, 30, and 60 days). Neurotensin‐like immunoreactivityincreased steadily from 2 to 30 days of age in the hypothalamus and then plateaued, while the preoptic area andamygdala concentrations peaked at 30 days of age. Brain‐stem neurotensin‐like immunoreactivity concentrationsincreased from 2 to 10 days of age and decreased from20 to 60 days of age. Several other regions showed nosignificant age‐associated changes in neurotensin‐like im‐munoreactivity.
An update to space biomedical research: tissue engineering in microgravity bioreactors.

INTRODUCTION The severe need for constructing replacement tissues in organ transplanta-tion has necessitated the development of tissue engineering approaches and bioreactors that can bring these approaches to reality. The inherent limitations of conventional bioreactors in generating realistic tissue constructs led to the devise of the microgravity tissue engineering that uses Rotating Wall Vessel (RWV) bioreactors initially developed by NASA. METHODS In this review article, we intend to highlight some major advances and accomplishments in the rapidly-growing field of tissue engineering that could not be achieved without using microgravity. RESULTS Research is now focused on assembly of 3 dimensional (3D) tissue fragments from various cell types in human body such as chon-drocytes, osteoblasts, embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells, hepatocytes and pancreas islet cells. Hepatocytes cultured under microgravity are now being used in extracorporeal bioartificial liver devices. Tissue constructs can be used not only in organ replacement therapy, but also in pharmaco-toxicology and food safety assessment. 3D models of vari-ous cancers may be used in studying cancer development and biology or in high-throughput screening of anticancer drug candidates. Finally, 3D heterogeneous assemblies from cancer/immune cells provide models for immunotherapy of cancer. CONCLUSION Tissue engineering in (simulated) microgravity has been one of the stunning impacts of space research on biomedical sciences and their applications on earth.
Description of Six New Capsular Types (29–34) of Streptococcus Suis

Streptococcus suis is probably the most important veterinary pathogen among streptococcal species belonging to the Lancefield group D. During the last 2 decades, it has been associated with a variety of infections in pigs and was recognized as an important zoonotic agent. Since its official recognition as a species in 1987, S. suis has been found in many other animal species, including cattle, small ruminants, horses, dogs, and cats . The number of capsular types has increased from 9 in 1983 to 29 in 1991. Among all S. suis capsular types, capsular type 2 is always the most prevalent type isolated from diseased pigs in most countries where the swine industry is important. This type also is practically the only one that causes human cases of septicemia, meningitis, and endocarditis. The majority of other isolates associated with pathologic processes belongs to capsular types 1/2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Some capsular types such as 18, 19, and 21 are generally recovered from clinically healthy animals. 10 The number of untypeable S. suis isolates is now relatively low. Because some of these isolates are recovered in large numbers from several tissues of a diseased animal, they are considered potential pathogens for animals and they become candidates for new capsular types. In this article, we describe and propose 6 new capsular types of S. suis, designated as 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, and 34. Bacterial strains included in this study were reference strains of S. suis capsular types 1-28 and 1/2 and 6 other strains representing proposed capsular types 29-34. Strains representing capsular types 29, 30, 32, and 34 were recovered from diseased pigs, whereas strains representing capsular types 31 and 33 were isolated from a diseased calf and a diseased lamb, respectively. One of the diseased pigs had meningitis and 1 had septicemia, and the last 2 were aborted fetuses. The 2-month-old Holstein calf was affected with a cerebral edema and a generalized vasculitis, and S. suis was isolated in large numbers from the brain and lungs. The lamb had marked posterior paresis, and the right coxal femoral joint had marked thickening of the joint capsule with fibrin present in the joint space. Bacteriologic culturing of the synovial fluid resulted in the recovery of a large pure population of S. suis. Capsular types 29, 30, 31, and 34 reference strains originated from the Clinical Bacteriology Laboratory of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Montreal, and capsular types 32 and 33 reference strains were provided by S. A. Rawiuk, Bacteriology Section, Animal Health Laborato-