Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Maximin Paths of Heterogeneous Capital Accumulation and the Instability of Paradoxical Steady States

If there exist heterogeneous capital goods, a steady state may be "paradoxical" in the sense that increasing the rate of interest above the Golden Rule level may lead to an increase in consumption or utility, rather than to the decrease which always occurs in one-sector models. It is shown that, in many cases, a path of capital accumulation which maximizes the minimum consumption or utility level is unlikely to converge to a paradoxical steady state of this kind. IN A ONE-SECTOR SOLOW-SWAN MODEL with homogeneous capital, a fall in the steady state interest rate always is associated with a rise in the steady state value of per capita utility, provided we are considering interest rates above the Golden Rule value. One aspect of the Cambridge controversy in capital theory concerns the fact that such steady state behavior does not always prevail in models with heterogeneous capital: lower interest rates can be associated with steady state equilibria having lower per capita utility. Might such steady states be unstable in some sense so that they would "almost never" be observed in an economy following some dynamic maximizing rules? Solow conjectured such a relationship, but until recently the question has been ignored.2 Burmeister and Long [5] have studied this question when the dynamic maximization rule is
A Peek Into the Future: Predicting the Popularity of Online Videos

Predicting the popularity of online videos is an important task for the service design, advertisement placement, network management, and so on. In this paper, we tackle the challenge head-on by casting the popularity prediction problem into two consecutive tasks: online video future popularity level prediction and online video future view count prediction. We first predict the future popularity levels of online videos, based on a rich set of features and effective classification technique. Then, according to the popularity level transitions, we build specialized regression models to predict the future view count values. We validate our approach on the exhaustive dataset of a leading online video service provider in China, namely, Youku. The experimental results show that comparing with two state-of-the-art baseline models, our proposed method can significantly decrease the relative prediction errors of 32.25% and 19.82%, respectively. At last, we also discuss the model setup and feature importance of our method. We believe our work can provide direct help in practical for the interested parties of online video service, such as service providers, online advisers, and network operators.
Pesticide use in tomato production: Consumer concerns and willingness-to-pay

Consumer attitudes toward pesticide use and residues in fresh produce and tomatoes were assessed using personal interviews of shoppers in produce sections of retail grocery stores. The results indicated a lower frequency of concern for pesticide use than earlier studies and a belief in both personal and external effects of pesticide use indicating altruism may affect consumer purchases. Almost half of the respondents indicated a willingness-to-accept cosmetic defects in chemical pesticide residue-free (CPRF) tomatoes. The majority of respondents indicated willingness-to-pay up to 10% more for CPRF tomatoes.
Manufacturing the Future

“Government is a crappy venture capitalist,” was how Larry Summers dismissed the Obama administration’s attempts to support clean energy manufacturing.1 Others believe that the decline in manufacturing jobs is not a problem, but rather a symptom of success. Robert Reich states: “What happened to manufacturing? In two words: higher productivity. ”2 He argues that manufacturing output is strong, but it requires fewer workers to produce it. As Austan Goolsbee—former head of Obama’s National Economic Council—put it, manufacturing decline is nothing to worry about because manufacturing is going through “exactly the same process that agriculture went through. ”3 Just as the U.S. economy shifted from agriculture to manufacturing, now we are shifting from manufacturing to a service-based economy. ManUfactUring the fUtUre Why Reindustrialization Is the Road to Recovery
Patterns of seasonality in employment in tourism in the UK

Tourism employment has grown rapidly (a fact which has been of interest to policymakers concerned with job generation) but it has a marked seasonal character. Several attempts have been made by the industry to lessen seasonality in tourism demand (and hence in tourism employment) by fillng troughs. This paper uses recent advances in econometric work to investigate whether seasonality has lessened as a result of these policies, and if so, the nature of the changes in seasonality. A quarterly UK data series from 1982:1 to 1996:4 is examined. The distinction between stochastic and deterministic trend is made, and it is found that seasonality has in fact lessened and is best modelled as a break in deterministic seasonality. There has been approximately a 30% fall in the summer (second quarter) effect and approximately a 24% fall in the winter (fourth quarter) effect: thus the seasonal smoothing comes from lower hiring at the start of the peak season and lower firing at the end of the season.
Appropriate IPRs, Human Capital Composition and Economic Growth

We generalize a standard technology diffusion model by allowing for IPRs regimes to be endogenously defined by the development level of each country. Also we insert differences in the composition of human capital between North (leader) and South (followers) which shape the relative costs of innovation and imitation. Results show how an optimal growth trajectory is found for the follower country which initially imitates and that, once a "threshold development stage" is reached, optimally switches to innovation by fully enforcing IPRs achieving a higher proximity with the technology frontier in the long-run. Other scenarios, such as a premature increase in the enforcement of IPRs or a switch from imitation to innovation at early stages of development of the followers are found to be sub-optimal.
Effects of rimonabant on metabolic risk factors in overweight patients with dyslipidemia.

BACKGROUND Rimonabant, a selective cannabinoid-1 receptor (CB1) blocker, has been shown to reduce body weight and improve cardiovascular risk factors in obese patients. The Rimonabant in Obesity-Lipids (RIO-Lipids) study examined the effects of rimonabant on metabolic risk factors, including adiponectin levels, in high-risk patients who are overweight or obese and have dyslipidemia. METHODS We randomly assigned 1036 overweight or obese patients (body-mass index [the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters], 27 to 40) with untreated dyslipidemia (triglyceride levels >1.69 to 7.90 mmol per liter, or a ratio of cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein [HDL] cholesterol of >4.5 among women and >5 among men) to double-blinded therapy with either placebo or rimonabant at a dose of 5 mg or 20 mg daily for 12 months in addition to a hypocaloric diet. RESULTS The rates of completion of the study were 62.6 percent, 60.3 percent, and 63.9 percent in the placebo group, the group receiving 5 mg of rimonabant, and the group receiving 20 mg of rimonabant, respectively. The most frequent adverse events resulting in discontinuation of the drug were depression, anxiety, and nausea. As compared with placebo, rimonabant at a dose of 20 mg was associated with a significant (P<0.001) mean weight loss (repeated-measures method, -6.7+/-0.5 kg, and last-observation-carried-forward analyses, -5.4+/-0.4 kg), reduction in waist circumference (repeated-measures method, -5.8+/-0.5 cm, and last-observation-carried-forward analyses, -4.7+/-0.5 cm), increase in HDL cholesterol (repeated-measures method, +10.0+/-1.6 percent, and last-observation-carried-forward analyses, +8.1+/-1.5 percent), and reduction in triglycerides (repeated-measures method, -13.0+/-3.5 percent, and last-observation-carried-forward analyses, -12.4+/-3.2 percent). Rimonabant at a dose of 20 mg also resulted in an increase in plasma adiponectin levels (repeated-measures method, 57.7 percent, and last-observation-carried-forward analyses, 46.2 percent; P<0.001), for a change that was partly independent of weight loss alone. CONCLUSIONS Selective CB1-receptor blockade with rimonabant significantly reduces body weight and waist circumference and improves the profile of several metabolic risk factors in high-risk patients who are overweight or obese and have an atherogenic dyslipidemia.
Suggestion d'experts pour renouveler le comité de programme d'une conférence

Le processus d'evaluation par les pairs permet de valider les progres scientifiques communiques dans des articles de recherche. Cette grande responsabilite repose sur les comites editoriaux des journaux, sur les comites de programme des conferences et sur chacun de leurs membres. De plus, avec un grand nombre de conferences scientifiques organisees chaque annee, la recherche d'experts pour participer au comite de programme devient une tâche frequente et couteuse. Dans cet article, nous proposons une modelisation d'expert basee sur differentes preuves d'expertise, notamment sur les citations, pour emettre des suggestions d'experts dans le cas d'une recherche de membres pour renouveler le comite de programme d'une conference.
Autonomous narration of humanoid robot kitchen task experience

The progress in humanoid robotics research has led to robots that are able to perform complex tasks with a certain level of autonomy by integrating perception, action, planning, and learning capabilities. However, robot capabilities are still limited in regard to how they externalize their internal state and world state, i.e. their sensorimotor experience, and how they explain which tasks they performed and how they performed these tasks. In other words, their capability in conveying information to the user in a way similar to what humans do is limited. To this end, we present a verbalization system that generates natural language explanations of the robot's past navigation and manipulation experience. We propose a threelayered model to represent robot experience which doubles as a retrievable episodic memory. Through the memory system, the robot can select a matching experience given a user query. In order to generate flexible narrations, we use verbalization parameters to capture user preferences. We show that our verbalization algorithm is capable of producing appropriate results based on these verbalization parameters. The proposed verbalization system is able to generate explanations for navigation as well as grasping and manipulation tasks. The resulting system is evaluated in a pick-and-place kitchen scenario.
Pricing to Market Behavior by Canadian and U.S. Agri-food Exporters: Evidence from Wheat, Pulse and Apples

A fixed-effects model to control for time variation in marginal costs is employed to pinpoint evidence of price discriminatory behavior of Canadian and U.S. exporters of agri-food products. We test for evidence of pricing to market behavior and whether price discrimination or commodity/country characteristics may provide a plausible explanation. A distinguishing feature of our approach is to examine the time-series properties of the data by the conventional augmented Dickey-Fuller and recently developed panel unit root test. The panel data set employed in this paper consists of annual exchange rates and export prices for three agri-food products (wheat, pulse and apples) exported by Canada and the U.S. in foreign markets during 1980–98. Our fixed-effects model suggests that U.S. exporters are sensitive to exchange rate changes, while Canadian exporters in most cases raised price markups in response to a depreciated currency in overseas markets. The results highlight the differences in pricing policy that both countries employ to merchandise agri-food products in export markets. Les auteurs ont recouru a un modele a effets fixes pour controler la fluctuation des couts marginaux dans le temps et montrer que les exportateurs canadiens et americains de produits agroalimentaires se comportent differemment dans l'etablissement des prix. Ils ont tente de verifier si ce comportement varie avec les cours en vigueur sur le marche et essaye d'etablir s'il s'explique par une discrimination au niveau des prix ou par les parametres propres au produit ou au pays. Une particularite de cette approche est qu'elle tient compte des proprietes historiques des donnees en recourant a la version augmentee du test classique de Dickey Fuller et au tout nouveau test de racine unitaire reposant sur les panels. Le jeu de donnees recueillies par panel dont les auteurs se sont servis comprend le taux du change annuel et le prix d'exportation de trois produits agroalimentaires (ble, legumineuses a graine et pommes) que le Canada et les Etats-Unis ont ecoules sur les marches etrangers entre 1980 et 1998. Le modele a effets fixes laisse croire que les exportateurs americains sont sensibles au taux du change alors que, dans la plupart des cas, leurs homologues canadiens majorent les prix davantage consecutivement a une depreciation des devises a l'etranger. Les resultats font ressortir les divergences entre les politiques de fixation des prix qu'emploient les deux pays pour ecouler leurs produits agroalimentaires sur les marches etrangers.
Variable expression of Parkinson's disease

The DATATOP database, which includes clinical information on 800 patients with early untreated Parkinson's disease (PD), is well suited to explore clinical heterogeneity in PD. Patients with early-onset PD (≤40 years, N = 33) reached the same level of disability as the late-onset PD (≥70 years, N = 85) group at a significantly slower rate (2.9 vs. 1.7 years). Early-onset PD patients functioned cognitively better than late-onset PD patients. Bradykinesia, and postural instability and gait difficulty (PIGD), were more common at onset in patients with a rapid rate of disease progression (“malignant PD”; duration of symptoms <1 year and Hoehnflahr stage of 2.5, N = 11) as compared with those with a relatively slow rate of progression (“benign PD”; duration of symptoms >4 years, N = 65). Comparisons of tremor-dominant PD (mean tremor score/ mean PIGD score ≤1.5, N = 441) with the PIGD-dominant type (mean tremor score/mean PIGD score ≥1.0, N = 233) provided support for the existence of clinical subtypes. The PIGD group reported significantly greater subjective intellectual, motor, and occupational impairment than the tremor group. Stage II patients had higher depression scores than stage I patients. Among the patients participating in the DATATOP, older age at onset with bradykinesia, or with the PIGD form of PD, is associated with more functional disability than when the symptoms are dominated by tremor or begin at a younger age.
High reliability capacitor bank design for modular multilevel converter in MV applications

In this paper, reliability evaluation of the capacitor bank for the Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) based on two common types of the DC-Link capacitors i.e. Aluminum Electrolytic and Film capacitors is investigated. Because of the high current ratio through the capacitor in the MMC, it is shown that in the Film capacitor because of the low ESR, the power loss and the core temperature rising will be lower than the Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitors. Based on three-sample design using ALE and Film capacitors, the reliability function over time is calculated for each case study. The result shows that the Film capacitor bank design is the high reliability and the long life solution in each design. In order to improve life time and reliability of the Aluminum Electrolytic Capacitor, adding Film Capacitor to ALE capacitor bank is presented in this paper.
Delayed Marriage and Very Low Fertility in Pacific Asia

The general decline in fertility levels in Pacific Asia has in its vanguard countries where fertility rates are among the lowest in the world. A related trend is toward delayed marriage and nonmarriage. When prevalence of cohabitation in European countries is allowed for, levels of “effective singlehood” in many countries of Pacific Asia have run ahead of those in northern and western Europe. This raises questions about the extent to which delayed marriage has been implicated in fertility declines, and whether the same factors are leading both to delayed marriage and to lowered fertility within marriage. The article argues that involuntary nonmarriage is likely to be more common in Pacific Asia than in Western countries, and that resultant involuntary childlessness plays a substantial role in the low fertility rates currently observed.
RNA replication by a respiratory syncytial virus RNA analog does not obey the rule of six and retains a nonviral trinucleotide extension at the leader end

Genome analogs ("minigenomes") of Sendai and measles viruses replicate efficiently only if their nucleotide length is an even multiple of six, a requirement called the rule of six (P. Calain and L. Roux, J. Virol. 67:4822-4830, 1993; M. S. Sidhu, J. Chan, K. Kaelin, P. Spielhofer, F. Radecke, H. Schneider, M. Masurekar, P. C. Dowling, M. A. Billeter, and S. A. Udem, Virology 208:800-807, 1995). The existence of a comparable requirement was tested for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which also is a member of family Paramyxoviridae and whose natural genome length also is a multiple of six. An internally truncated analog of RSV positive-sense replicative intermediate RNA (antigenome) bearing the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase gene as a reporter was synthesized from cDNA in vitro. This RNA was transfected into cells which were infected with RSV as a helper. Miniantigenomic RNA was indistinguishable from previously studied negative-sense minigenome RNA in its ability to participate in transcription, RNA replication, and incorporation into transmissible particles. Sixteen miniantigenomes which were of slightly different lengths and which in aggregate represented multiples of a wide range of integers including 1 to 15 were constructed. During transfection and two serial passages, the various miniantigenomes were essentially indistinguishable with regard to the efficiency of transcription, RNA replication, and packaging into transmissible particles. Progeny minigenomes of six different mutants were recovered postpassage, copied into cDNA, cloned, and sequenced completely. The length of each of these RNAs was found to have remained unchanged during replication and passage. Thus, RSV transcription and replication appear to lack the requirement that the template length be an even multiple of an integer such as six, which for Sendai and measles viruses is obligatory for nucleocapsid function. Each of the in vitro-synthesized miniantigenomes used in transfection contained a nonviral extension of three nucleotides, GGG, on the 5' (leader) end contributed by the T7 promoter. The termini of the recovered minigenomes were examined for five mutants by RNA circularization followed by cDNA synthesis, amplification, cloning, and sequencing. Unexpectedly, each recovered minigenome contained the complement of this nonviral extension on the 3' (leader) end, showing that it had been faithfully copied and maintained during RNA replication and passage. The nonviral trinucleotide did not appear to affect the activity of the template.
Implicit Block Diagonal Low-Rank Representation

While current block diagonal constrained subspace clustering methods are performed explicitly on the original data space, in practice, it is often more desirable to embed the block diagonal prior into the reproducing kernel Hilbert feature space by kernelization techniques, as the underlying data structure in reality is usually nonlinear. However, it is still unknown how to carry out the embedding and kernelization in the models with block diagonal constraints. In this paper, we shall take a step in this direction. First, we establish a novel model termed implicit block diagonal low-rank representation (IBDLR), by incorporating the implicit feature representation and block diagonal prior into the prevalent low-rank representation method. Second, mostly important, we show that the model in IBDLR could be kernelized by making use of a smoothed dual representation and the specifics of a proximal gradient-based optimization algorithm. Finally, we provide some theoretical analyses for the convergence of our optimization algorithm. Comprehensive experiments on synthetic and real-world data sets demonstrate the superiorities of our IBDLR over state-of-the-art methods.
Linking the worlds of work and family: Beyond the productivity trap

Corporate America began to explore employees' child-care responsibilities approximately fifteen years ago, yet today less than 1 % of US companies offer some form of childcare assistance. One of the primary reasons cited for companies' general reluctance to embrace family-oriented benefits for employees is the lack of data demonstrating that these initiatives result in productivity gains. This article examines the work-family and productivity research undertaken to date and suggests that to understand how corporate family-responsive initiatives affect the work place it is necessary (a) to expand the inquiry from a narrow focus on corporate productivity or efficiency gains to a broader assessment of organizational effectiveness and (b) to frame the question within a corporate or organizational culture context. © 1993 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Operating wavelength range of 25.8-Gb/s 1.3-µm DML extended to 30 nm

A 30-nm operating wavelength range was realized for a 1.3-μm InGaAlAs DML with a 25.8-Gb/s push-pull driving configuration. Clear eye openings, an 8.0-dBm output power, and a 4.0-dB dynamic extinction ratio were obtained.
DNA methylation and Z‐DNA formation as mediators of quantitative differences in the expression of alleles

Summary: With draft copies of several model genomes available in the near future, attention is turning towards the genetic mechanisms that determine differences between individuals. While mutations in protein coding regions affect the structure of gene products, polymorphisms outside such regions may cause quantitative differences in gene expression. Here we summarize observations indicating that such differences may be mediated by allele‐specific alterations in the modification or structure of DNA. Mono‐allelic expression of the rat T‐cell differentiation marker RT6 in a subpopulation of cells is associated with allele‐specific differences in DNA methylation in the RT6 promoter. In contrast to previously described examples of mono‐allelic expression, these are determined neither stochastically nor by parental origin, but by cis‐acting elements within the alleles. An attractive candidate is a rodent identifier (ID) element exclusively present in the RT6a allele. In the case of the rat nucleolin gene, a polymorphic dinucleotide repeat in the 5′ region modulates promoter strength and forms left‐handed Z‐DNA in vivo. Models explaining putative effects of Z‐DNA formation on transcription are presented. These observations suggest novel mechanisms by which repetitive DNA, an abundant source of polymorphism in the mammalian genome, may exert quantitative effects on gene expression.