Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Therapeutic Drug Monitoring of Cyclosporine‐Lipoprotein Levels

Cyclosporine therapy is complicated by nephrotoxicity that is not predicted by drug levels. In this study serial trough blood samples were obtained from 11 allogeneic marrow transplant recipients after initiation of intravenous cyclosporine 2 mg/kg every 12 hours for a period extending 4 weeks after transplantation. Renal dysfunction, assessed by an increase in serum creatinine levels to twice baseline values or when greater than 175 μmol/L, was found in four patients. No associations between renal dysfunction and cyclosporine levels in whole blood, total plasma, or lipoprotein fractions were found. The ratios of maximum and mean high‐density low‐density lipoprotein cyclosporine concentrations were greatest in patients with renal dysfunction (p < 0.001). The data suggest therapeutic drug monitoring of cyclosporine in various biologic fluids does not predict onset of drug‐associated renal dysfunction. However, the relative role of high‐density to low‐density lipoprotein transport of cyclosporine may provide an index of renal functional changes associated with the agent.
Ortaöğretim Kurumlarında Yürütülen Psikolojik Danışma ve Rehberlik Hizmetlerine Yönelik Okul Müdürü, Sınıf Rehber Öğretmeni, Öğrenci ve Okul Rehber Öğretmeninin (Psikolojik Danışman) Görüşlerinin İncelenmesi

Bu arastirmanin temel amaci, ortaogretim kurumlarinda yurutulen psikolojik danisma ve rehberlik hizmetlerine yonelik okul muduru, sinif rehber ogretmeni, ogrenci ve okul rehber ogretmeninin (psikolojik danisman) goruslerini belirlemektir. Arastirmada nitel arastirma desenlerinden olgu bilim calismasi kullanilmistir. Bu calisma 2010-2011 ogretim yilinda alti okul muduru, on alti sinif rehber ogretmeni, yirmi uc ogrenci ve yedi okul rehber ogretmeni olmak uzere toplam 52 katilimci ile yurutulmustur. Veriler arastirmacilar tarafindan hazirlanan yari yapilandirilmis gorusme formu araciligiyla yuz yuze toplanmistir. Verilerin analizinde icerik analizi yontemi kullanilmistir. Arastirma sonuclari; okul muduru, sinif rehber ogretmeni, ogrenci ve okul rehber ogretmenlerinin, PDR hizmetlerini farkli tanimladiklarini gostermektedir. Mudur, sinif rehber ogretmeni ve ogrencilerin okul rehber ogretmenlerinden farkli olarak, PDR hizmetlerini daha cok sorun cozucu, ogut verici ve dert ortakligi olarak tanimladiklari gorulmustur. Arastirmada elde edilen bulgular alan yazin isiginda tartisilmis ve sonuclarla ilgili oneriler gelistirilmistir
A Novel Ensemble Strategy for Classification of Prostate Cancer Protein Mass Spectra

Protein mass spectra pattern recognition is a new forum in which many machine learning algorithms have been conducted to enhance the chance of early cancer diagnosis. The high-dimensionality-small-sample (HDSS) problem of cancer proteomic datasets still requires more sophisticated approaches to improve the classification accuracy. In this study we present a simple ensemble strategy based on measuring the generalizing capability of different subsets of training data and apply it in making final decision. Using a limited number of biomarkers along with 5 classification algorithms, the proposed method achieved a promising performance over a well-known prostate cancer mass spectroscopy dataset.
The value equation

Value, from the point of view of customer, is defined as the customer’s subjective evaluation, adjusted for cost, of how well a good/service meets or exceeds expectations. Nevertheless, some aspects must be considerate, such as: quality, speed, and flexibility; these factors are considered in the value equation. In this work are explained what it is the value equation.
THE EFFICIENCY OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONEY MARKETS: A COMMENT

McInish and Puglisi reccntly claimed that weak form efficiency should be tested by runs tests and not autocorrelation tests, when returns are not Normal. It is the opinion of this author however, that autocorrelation tests are not invalidated by a non-Normal distribution. Furthermore, it can be shown that the runs test has lower power than autocorrelation tests and ihat the runs test is not preferable.
International technology diffusion through imports and its impact on economic growth

This paper provides new evidence on the importance of international technology spillovers channelled by imports and its impact on economic TFP growth of the OECD countries. For this purpose we estimate a version of the growth model with endogenous technological change used in Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), which includes some modifications in order to capture the differences in the degree of success that countries have in benefiting from foreign technology spillovers. Our results suggest that domestic R&D and human capital stocks are critical for successful technology diffusion from abroad.
Implied Distributions from GBPUSD Risk-Reversals and Implication for Brexit Scenarios

Much of the debate around a potential British exit (Brexit) from the European Union has centred on the potential macroeconomic impact. In this paper, we instead focus on understanding market expectations for price action around the Brexit referendum date. Extracting implied distributions from the GBPUSD option volatility surface, we originally estimated, based on our visual observation of implied probability densities available up to 13 June 2016, that the market expected that a vote to leave could result in a move in the GBPUSD exchange rate from 1.4390 (spot reference on 10 June 2016) down to a range in 1.10 to 1.30, i.e., a 10–25% decline—very probably with highly volatile price action. To quantify this more objectively, we construct a mixture model corresponding to two scenarios for the GBPUSD exchange rate after the referendum vote, one scenario for “remain” and one for “leave”. Calibrating this model to four months of market data, from 24 February to 22 June 2016, we find that a “leave” vote was associated with a predicted devaluation of the British pound to approximately 1.37 USD per GBP, a 4.5% devaluation, and quite consistent with the observed post-referendum exchange rate move down from 1.4877 to 1.3622. We contrast the behaviour of the GBPUSD option market in the run-up to the Brexit vote with that during the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, finding the potential impact of Brexit to be considerably higher.
Vertical product differentiation and competition in the supermarket industry

This thesis examines the mechanisms by which retail markets converge to a concentrated structure where competition is dominated by only a few large firms. Using a model of competition based on the vertical product differentiation (VPD) enciogenous sunk cost framework proposed by Sutton (1991), several empirical implications are identified and evaluated using a detailed dataset of store level observations from the supermarket industry. Chapter 2 provides a formal test of the hypothesis that the high levels of concentration observed in the supermarket industry are the result of competitive investment in endogenous sunk costs. Using the bounds regression methodology developed in Sutton (1991), I document the existence of a large, positive lower bound to concentration that remains bounded above zero regardless of market size. This exercise is supplemented by a detailed case history of the industry that provides additional evidence that competition is focused on sunk outlays. In chapter 3, I expand the analysis by focusing on the local structure of competition. The principal contributions of the empirical work presented in this chapter involve identifying the high quality set of supermarket firms, demonstrating that they exist only in bounded numbers (do not increase proportionately with the size of the market), and identifying features of the observed market structure which are inconsistent with alternative explanations, namely by highlighting the distinctive nature of strategic complementarity. As such, I demonstrate that the VPD framework accords well with the combination of features observed in the supermarket industry, providing an accurate representation of the mechanisms sustaining its concentrated structure, which appear to be both competitive and stable. Three formal models of retail competition are presented in chapter 4, along with testable implications regarding the strategic interactions of rival firms. Thesis Supervisor: Scott Stern Title: NTU Career Development Assistant Professor of Management Thesis Supervisor: Susan Athey Title: Castle Krob Career Development Associate Professor of Economics
The investigation on the relationship between the problem of long-term loan and economic growth

Purpose - Since the reform and opening-up policy, the long-term problem of loans became more and more serious when China's economy maintained rapid growth. The purpose of this paper is to explore the profound causes of the medium- and long-term problem of loans and the relationship between it and economic growth. Design/methodology/approach - Using panel data for 28 provinces and cities of China during 1994-2005, this paper investigates the determinants on the maturity of bank credit using threshold panel data of Hansen. In addition, using dynamics panel data, this paper investigates the effects of the maturity structure of bank credit on economic growth. Findings - The drop of bank industry concentration tends to increase the supply of long-term loans. The raise of economic growth and the increase of industrialization degree promote the demand of long-term loans, significantly. Furthermore, the threshold effects of inflation exist. When the initial inflation is lower than 3.9 percent, the raise of inflation can increase the supply of long-term loans. When the initial inflation is higher than 3.9 percent, the raise of inflation can decrease the supply of long-term loans. The increase in the supply of long-term loans can promote the economic growth. Originality/value - The paper has two innovations: first, when studying the determinants on the maturity of bank credit, using the threshold panel approach takes account of the nonlinear adjustment of inflation; second, including the maturity of bank credit into the realm of financial development studies the relationship between this and economic growth.
Just‐in‐Time: A United States‐United Kingdom Comparison

Managerial practices and perceptions in the implementation of just‐in‐time (JIT) principles and concepts are significantly different in the United Kingdom compared to the United States. In a study of 99 companies located throughout both countries, several distinct differences between the US and the UK were found. US companies tend to provide a greater range of training and education for their employees than do UK companies. Incentives for employees are more prevalent in the US than the UK. The UK lags behind the US in taking JIT to the shopfloor. Respondents in both countries indicated comparable dissatisfaction with the implementation process. Problems in implementation included: lack of top management commitment and support, poor communication, lack of cross‐functional planning teams, data accuracy, and supplier participation. In conclusion, JIT tends to be viewed more often as a technique by UK managers whereas their US counterparts practise JIT from a philosophical perspective.
Dynamic Analysis in an Optimizing Monetary Model with Transaction Costs and Endogenous Investment

This paper analyzes the period-to-period changes that occur in an optimizing monetary model with uncertainty and sticky prices. Money is incorporate in its role as a medium of exchange through a time-cost transactions techonolgy. Another important characteristic of the model is that both capital and investment are obtained endogenously. In this regar, adjustment costs of installing investment are incorporated to smooth and delay capital movements over the economic cycle. We will focus attention on analyzing the consumption, investment, and real money demand functions resulting from the model. These three equations gives rise to the structural IS-LM economy as part of the general equilibrium described in the paper. Nominal prices are sticky, i. e. , they do not adjust instantly thereby allowing departures from general equilibrium obtained when there is absence of nominal frictions. We chose to have the Fuhrer-Moore specification for nominal contract prices. The model is calibrated on quarterly observations from United States data. Four types of exogenous shocks are included in our setup: production technology shocks, consumption preference (demand) shocks, monetary policy shocks, and shopping time shocks. Hence, variability of output, consumption, investment, etc., may result from several sources. The impact of each shock in the economic cyce will be examined by plotting impulse-response fuctions implied by the solution of the model.
Analysis of two-phase path management scheme for MPLS traffic engineering

Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is suitable for implementing Traffic Engineering (TE) to achieve two goals: Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning and the efficient use of network resources. In fact, MPLS allows several detour paths to be (pre-)established for some source-destination pair as well as its primary path of minimum hops. Thus, we focus on a two-phase path management scheme using these two kinds of paths. In the first phase, each primary path is allocated to a flow on a specific source-destination pair if the path is not congested, i.e., if its utilization is less than some predetermined threshold; otherwise, as the second phase, one of the detour paths is allocated randomly if it is available. Therefore, in this paper, we analytically evaluate this path management scheme by extending the M/M/c/c queueing system and we investigate the impact of a threshold on the flow-blocking probability. Through some numerical results, we discuss the adequacy of the path management scheme for MPLS-TE.
Socio-economic Characteristics and Household Savings: An Analysis of the Households' Saving Behaviour in Pakistan

Domestic resource mobilization is one of the key determinants of sustained economic growth. Pakistan's performance with regard to domestic resource mobilization has been poor despite maintaining a respectable economic growth rate. Why is the savings rate so low in Pakistan? In this paper we analyse the household savings behaviour in Pakistan, using micro level data of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) for the year 1984-85. Three different non-linear savings functions attributed to Keynes, Klein, and Landau are estimated separately for the urban and the rural households, using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) technique. It is found that the average income and saving of an urban household are considerably higher than those of overall Pakistan or a rural household. However, contrary to the general belief, it is found that the propensity to save of the rural households is much higher than that of their urban counterparts. The dependency ratio and the various categories of education are found to have a negative influence on household savings. No systematic relationship is found between savings and the employment status and occupation of the household head. It is found, however, that saving increases with age but tends to decline when the age crosses a certain limit - a finding consistent with the Life Cycle Hypothesis.
Entropy reduction and decorrelation in visual coding by oriented neural receptive fields

In biological visual systems, it is not obvious whether coding efficiency as measured by mutual information among the neurons is a factor that explains any of their properties. The center/surround receptive field profiles of neurons in the retina and geniculate are far from an orthogonal set, but a given neuron can still be regarded as a decorrelator of the incoming signal in the sense that it responds primarily to changes in the image. At the level of the brain's visual cortex, the introduction of the new variable of orientation selectivity can be regarded not only as a means for providing orientation labels for image structure, but also more basically as an effective decorrelator of the neural representation. The present image coding simulations, based on quantitative neurobiological data about the code primitives, provide measures of the bit-rate efficiency of such oriented, quadrature, neural codes. Demonstrations of data compression to below 1 bit/pixel in cortically-based, quadrature self-similar wavelet image codes are also provided. <<ETX>>
Force and vibrotactile integration for 3D user interaction within virtual environments

Proper integration of sensory cues facilitates 3D user interaction within virtual environments (VEs). Studies on multi-sensory integration of visual and haptic cues revealed that the integration follows maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). Little effort focuses however on integrating force and vibrotactile cues - two sub-categorical cues of the haptic modality. Hence, this paper presents an investigation on MLE's suitability for integrating these sub-categorical cues. Within a stereoscopic VE, human users performed a 3D interactive task of navigating a flying drone along a high-voltage transmission line in an inaccessible region and identifying defects on the line. The users had to identify defects via individual force or vibrotactile cues, and their combinations in co-located and dislocated settings. The co-located setting provided both cues on the right hand of the users; whereas the dislocated setting delivered the force and vibrotactile cues on the right hand and forearm of the users, respectively. Task performance of the users, such as completion time and accuracy, was assessed under each cue and setting. The presence of the vibrotactile cue promoted a better performance than the force cue alone. This was in agreement with the role of tactile cues in sensing surface properties, herein setting a baseline for using MLE. The task performance under the co-located setting indicated certain degrees of combining those under the individual cues. In contrast, the performance under the dislocated setting was alike that under the individual vibrotactile cue. These observations imply an inconclusiveness of MLE to integrate both cues in a co-located setting for 3D user interaction.
The Post-Application Labour Market Consequences of Employment Tribunal Claims

This article examines the post-application employment consequences for individuals registering complaints to Employment Tribunals following dismissal or redundancy. We consider several pieces of evidence: (a) the probability of finding another job, (b) the time taken to get a new job and (c) the pay/status of the new job. Our results indicate that age plays a significant role in aspects (a) and (c), while those who previously held managerial positions generally took longest to get a new job and found it most difficult to achieve a similar level of pay/status in their current jobs. Long-term health problems/disability is associated with significantly worse outcomes on all three measures. Respondents whose cases were dismissed by tribunals without hearings fared worst in terms of obtaining a new job and the time it took to do so. There are, however, fewer differences by tribunal outcome in the relative pay/status of the claimant's current job.
Stock Dividend Announcement Effects in an Imputation Tax Environment

A key question in asset pricing is the extent to which tax effects are passed through market prices or are capitalised in them. New Zealand stock dividends provide a useful window into this debate because of (1) the existence of both taxable and non-taxable stock dividends, and (2) the particular form of imputation tax system which allows the full pass through of corporate taxes to the investor on the proportion of profits which are distributed either as cash or taxable stock dividends. We present evidence that investors value future tax benefits associated with imputation tax credits. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.
Trade flows: a facet of regionalism or globalisation?

This paper examines the evidence about the extent of globalisation by focusing on some aspects of international trade flows. A reinterpretation of the existing evidence based on the analysis of tables and a range of indicators is provided in the first part of the paper. The focus is on whether the increase in trade flows has been predominantly a global or regional phenomenon. The analysis points to the tentative conclusion that the dominant tendency is the increase in trade within regional blocs (North America, the EU and the Asia--Japan blocs) rather than across them. To address the same question, a more formal analysis is undertaken in the second part of the paper, by focusing on the relative speed of the convergence in openness within and across regions of the world. Our results indicate that the degree of openness converges faster across the countries of a given region rather than at the global level, reinforcing the conclusions from the first part of the paper. The results are consistent with the view that trade integration is more of a 'regional' phenomenon than a 'global' one. Copyright 2004, Oxford University Press.
The Assessment: Knowledge, Skills, and Competitiveness

The autumn 1988 issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy considered the UK's deficiencies in vocational education and training (VET). It was there that Finegold and Soskice first popularized the notion of the 'low skills/low quality' equilibrium. This Assessment introduces a range of articles which discuss developments in the decade that has passed since then. It argues that, despite massive policy initiatives, there has been only limited improvement in the UK's relative VET performance. Considerable progress has been made in analysis of market failures affecting the supply of skills, and in analysis of the possible causes and consequences of low employer demand for skills (systems failure). The recent Competitiveness White Paper reflects this improved understanding. However, there is still an imperfect appreciation of the nature of skills and of their contribution to the development of a more competitive, higher value-added economy. The article ends by suggesting how progress might be made on this front. Copyright 1999 by Oxford University Press.
Greed and Fear in Financial Markets: The Case of Stock Spam E-Mails

Using a rich dataset of stock spam e-mails as a laboratory, we test and find support for three behavioral finance theories related to investor attention, ambiguity, and overweighting of low probability outcomes. First, we find that both the dollar volume and return on the peak day of the spam campaigns (SCs) are significantly higher compared to those on randomly selected non-spam dates. In addition, SCs reduce the number of zero trading days while the campaign is underway. Second, e-mails with a target price have significantly higher abnormal dollar volume and abnormal return on the peak day of the SC than e-mails without a target price. Thus, individual investors favor bets with unambiguous payoffs, which supports the ambiguity hypothesis. Finally, when the target price indicated in spam e-mails is about 53 times the current price, the abnormal return of the SC peaked at 31%. We document a nonlinear relationship between abnormal return on the peak day of the SCs and the premium implied in the spam e-mails. Although investors overweight low probability events, the overweighting decreases when the probability becomes out of reach. Our findings concerning target price are consistent with cumulative prospect theory.