Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Note on Initial Conditions and Liberalization During Transition

Literature explaining variations in economic performance among transition economies places a high level of importance on the role of policy. Policy differences are measured via a liberalization index used to explain differences in performance. We find that this index may be endogenous to one performance measure. e.g. output decline, and may, therefore, overstate the role of policy. This paper performs an instrumental variables (IV) estimate of the relationship between liberalization and performance that also allows us to generate a relative index of reform progress. The relative index challenges some commnly held preconceptions about which transition economies are rapid reformers and which are slow reformers.
The anthropometric assessment of dysmorphic features in schizophrenia as an index of its developmental origins

Background. Evidence suggests that schizophrenia may be a disorder with origins in early intrauterine mal-development. We have constructed a comprehensive anthropometric scale for the evaluation of dysmorphic features as an index of the nature and timing of developmental disturbance. Method. A detailed set of craniofacial and bodily measures was compiled and applied to 174 patients with schizophrenia and 80 matched control subjects. Results. Patients had significantly higher scores on this scale and displayed multiple anomalies of the craniofacial region with an overall narrowing and elongation of the mid-face and lower face. Twelve craniofacial anomalies independently distinguished patients from controls and these variables correctly classified 95% of patients and 80% of control subjects. Conclusions. This new scale, while procedurally more exacting than the Waldrop scale, more clearly defines the topography of anomalies previously suspected in individuals with schizophrenia. These findings constitute direct evidence for disturbed craniofacial development in schizophrenia and indicate origins in the foetal period during which the characteristic human facial pattern evolves in close association with brain differentiation.
Prepayments on fixed-rate mortgage-backed securities

Scott F . Richard and Richard Roll M ortgage-backed securities (MBSs) are increasingly a part of the financial scene. To assess their relative value and the value of their derivatives, it is essential to predict mortgage prepayments accurately. It is important to understand how mortgage pass-through securities will prepay in today’s interest rate environment as well as how prepayments will fluctuate as interest rates fluctuate. This paper introduces our latest work on prepayment modeling. Recognizing that work in this area is never completed, we feel nevertheless that our model includes certain innovations and attributes that extend the understanding of mortgage prepayments. We begin by analyzing the economic theory underlying a homeowner’s decision to prepay a mortgage. This option-theoretic analysis serves as the basis for our empirical model of prepayment rates. Three aspects of our model are novel. First, we measure the mortgagor’s refinancing incentive as the ratio of the mortgage coupon to the current refinancing rate, not as the difference between these two rates. This idea comes from our economic analysis of the mortgagor’s prepayment decision. Second, we show that the seasoning process for mortgages depends importantly on this same ratio, the coupon relative to the refinancing rate. In particular, premium mortgages season more rapidly than current coupon mortgages, which, in turn, season more rapidly than discount mortgages. Finally, we examine the tendency of premium mortgages to slow or “burn out” over time. We introduce a measure of premium burnout that depends on the entire interest rate history since the mortgage was issued. We try to provide sufficient details so that readers can understand how the model works. Examples in the figures explain the Goldman Sachs prepayment model, without bogging readers down with unnecessary mathematical detail. We also report a detailed summary of our model’s predictions in relation to actual prepayment data.
Russian Energy Taxes for GTAP 5.3

This memorandum records work done to revise energy data for Russia for release 5.3 of the GTAP Data Base, more specifcally, data for commodity taxes on energy. The main object of the work is to let us ¯t the Russian input-output (IO) table to the energy data. A secondary object is to improve the representation of energy taxes in the fitted table.
Leadership and Inclusion: Reculturing for Reform

It [inclusion] probably has some merit to it. If I were a parent, I certainly would be an advocate for it. On the other hand, as a regular ed teacher, I wouldn't get too excited about it&. For the most part, I have not been a strong advocate for inclusion&. I've seen some cross-categorical, self-contained models that work well, and some resource models that work well; I just haven't seen that many inclusion models that were successful. —public school principal
Risk‐adjusted analysis of surgeon performance: A 1‐year study

respectively. Ten per cent of the group required augmentation surgery and 10 per cent had major amputation at 4, 5, 14 and 18months after PTA. We agree that PTA in suitably selected patients with critical limb ischaemia can be successful in avoiding major amputation. Our experience of restenosis after PTA is that it may not be an important clinical problem presumably because angioplasty has allowed time for a collateral arterial circulation to develop.
Importance of first trimester scan – 4 of 4 Screening for early fetal structural anomalies

Improvement of high resolution ultrasound scan equipment, have enabled obstetricians to examine the fetus during first trimester in more detail than ever before. It is established that first trimester ultrasound scan is superior to second trimester scan in determining gestational age, risk assessment for chromosomal aneuploidy and chorionicity in multiple pregnancy1-3. Moreover, first trimester scan can also be used in screening fetal structural anomalies. It is CONTINUOUS PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Low profile circularly polarized SIW-like cavity-backed slot antennas

Two types of single fed low-profile SIW-like cavitybacked planar slot antennas for circularly polarization (CP) application are designed, fabricated and measured. Firstly, a spoon shaped slot structure cavity-backed by a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity is proposed to realize the CP performance. Next, a half mode SIW (HMSIW) cavity-backed semi-circle slot antenna is proposed to further reduce the size of the antenna element. Finally, the measured and simulated results validate the proposed antennas.
Thick-section fluorescence in situ hybridization on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded archival tissue provides a histogenetic profile.

Fluorescence in situ hybridization has become a major tool for analysis of gene and chromosome copy number in normal and malignant tissue. The technique has been applied widely to fresh tissue and dispersed formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded archival tissue, but its use on sections of archival tissue has largely been limited to sections < 6 mu thick. This does not provide intact, uncut nuclei for accurate analysis of gene or chromosome copy number. We report here a method of hybridization to sections > 20 microns thick that overcomes these difficulties. Key developments were the use of DNA probes directly labeled with fluorochromes and optical sectioning using laser-scanning confocal microscopy.
Forecasting Trade Potential between Former Non-Trading Neighbors - The Israeli-Arab Case

A gravity model at the industry level is implemented to estimate the potential and industrial distribution of trade between former non-trading neighboring countries. The model incorporates a differentiated proxy for transportation costs at the industry level, rather than simply using geographic distance, and is implemented to estimate the trade potential between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Results show that a differentiated proxy for transportation costs is a better explanatory variable to the volume of trade than distance, and indicate a much larger trade potential between Israel and its Arab neighbors than estimates of previous studies.
An investigation on green attitudes and demographics: Understanding the intention of international tourists in Malaysia to pay a premium for green hotels

Lodging industry is one of the most crucial segments that consume a large amount of non-renewable resources. The extant literature shows that a large number of hotels are conducting green performances to offset the shift in customers’ buying behaviour from conventional hotels towards green hotels. Thus, an empirical investigation on hotel customers’ demographic as well as eco-friendly attitudes and intentions can help hotel operators better predict green buying behaviour of their potential/current customers. In this regard, the author conducts a series of multiple regression analyses in order to find any relationships between green attitudes and the intention to pay a premium for green hotels in Malaysia. A total of usable responses were used for data analysis. In general, findings reveal that except for seriousness of environmental problems (SEP), all other green attitudes, applied in this study, have a significant impact on the intention to pay a premium for green hotels. In addition, results of ANOVA indicate a variety of differences in intention to pay a premium for green hotels across different demographic characteristics. Finally, findings of this study not only affirm the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) by Ajzen (1975), but also provide managerial implications for hoteliers, marketers, and tourism ministries for better sustainability, segmentation, positioning, and resource allocation.
Equity Measures and Their Performance in Transportation

This paper aims at equity implications of transportation policies by using a range of equity measures in two case studies. Different measures of inequality embrace different normative judgments. Early studies have warned about placing too much trust in a single measure. One approach is to address equity considerations by assuming an explicit form of social welfare function and the choice of a desired inequality aversion parameter. A second approach is to apply an inequality measure to a given pair of distributions of a variable (e.g., income and accessibility) that changes as the result of a policy. The latter approach is adopted in this paper. A partial equilibrium model of transportation is used for the calculation of the changes in income, accessibility, and the net benefit for different social groups. This paper demonstrates the challenges that arise in addressing equity with a partial equilibrium model of transportation. An overview of some equity measures and their properties is provided first. The performances of these equity measures are evaluated for alternative road pricing schemes for Oslo, Norway. The paper illustrates that relating the equity objective to a predefined value of any of these measures is not desirable. It is difficult to make a judgment about the equity implication of a policy on the basis of a single measure and without a thorough examination of several measures. The paper also shows that the sizes of the equity measures are quite sensitive to the level of spatial disaggregation.
The phage abortive infection system, ToxIN, functions as a protein–RNA toxin–antitoxin pair

Various mechanisms exist that enable bacteria to resist bacteriophage infection. Resistance strategies include the abortive infection (Abi) systems, which promote cell death and limit phage replication within a bacterial population. A highly effective 2-gene Abi system from the phytopathogen Erwinia carotovora subspecies atroseptica, designated ToxIN, is described. The ToxIN Abi system also functions as a toxin–antitoxin (TA) pair, with ToxN inhibiting bacterial growth and the tandemly repeated ToxI RNA antitoxin counteracting the toxicity. TA modules are currently divided into 2 classes, protein and RNA antisense. We provide evidence that ToxIN defines an entirely new TA class that functions via a novel protein-RNA mechanism, with analogous systems present in diverse bacteria. Despite the debated role of TA systems, we demonstrate that ToxIN provides viral resistance in a range of bacterial genera against multiple phages. This is the first demonstration of a novel mechanistic class of TA systems and of an Abi system functioning in different bacterial genera, both with implications for the dynamics of phage-bacterial interactions.
The commercialisation of public sector information within UK government departments

Reports that there are increasing trends towards the commercialisation of public sector information. Explains the concepts of information trading and discusses the role of the public sector. Describes three case studies within the UK government. Identifies the lack of a uniform approach to information trading within UK government departments in terms of attitudes to information provision, information costing and pricing and the resourcing of an information trading function. Discusses issues concerning the national and departmental policy on information distribution and trading; the resourcing and management of information technology to support the information trading function; the development of an information‐aware culture within the government and its departments and the development of contractual relationships with marketing agents within the private sector. Examines the effect of online information provision on information trading. Discusses the application of agency theory to the study of the role of marketing agents and identifies their importance in the development of a public sector information trading market. Concludes that there is a lack of clear direction for government departments concerning information trading.
Global‐scale patterns of nutrient density and partitioning in forests in relation to climate

Knowledge of nutrient storage and partitioning in forests is imperative for ecosystem models and ecological theory. Whether the nutrients (N, P, K, Ca, and Mg) stored in forest biomass and their partitioning patterns vary systematically across climatic gradients remains unknown. Here, we explored the global‐scale patterns of nutrient density and partitioning using a newly compiled dataset including 372 forest stands. We found that temperature and precipitation were key factors driving the nutrients stored in living biomass of forests at global scale. The N, K, and Mg stored in living biomass tended to be greater in increasingly warm climates. The mean biomass N density was 577.0, 530.4, 513.2, and 336.7 kg/ha for tropical, subtropical, temperate, and boreal forests, respectively. Around 76% of the variation in biomass N density could be accounted by the empirical model combining biomass density, phylogeny (i.e., angiosperm, gymnosperm), and the interaction of mean annual temperature and precipitation. Climate, stand age, and biomass density significantly affected nutrients partitioning at forest community level. The fractional distribution of nutrients to roots decreased significantly with temperature, suggesting that forests in cold climates allocate greater nutrients to roots. Gymnosperm forests tended to allocate more nutrients to leaves as compared with angiosperm forests, whereas the angiosperm forests distributed more nutrients in stems. The nutrient‐based Root:Shoot ratios (R:S), averaged 0.30 for R:SN, 0.36 for R:SP, 0.32 for R:SK, 0.27 for R:SCa, and 0.35 for R:SMg, respectively. The scaling exponents of the relationships describing root nutrients as a function of shoot nutrients were more than 1.0, suggesting that as nutrient allocated to shoot increases, nutrient allocated to roots increases faster than linearly with nutrient in shoot. Soil type significantly affected the total N, P, K, Ca, and Mg stored in living biomass of forests, and the Acrisols group displayed the lowest P, K, Ca, and Mg.
LFA-3 plasmid DNA enhances Ag-specific humoral- and cellular-mediated protective immunity against herpes simplex virus-2 in vivo: involvement of CD4+ T cells in protection.

Adhesion molecules are important for cell trafficking and delivery of secondary signals for stimulation of T cells and antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in a variety of immune and inflammatory responses. Adhesion molecules lymphocyte function-associated antigen (LFA)-1 and CD2 on T cells recognize intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM)-1 and LFA-3 on APCs, respectively. Recent studies have suggested that these molecules might play a regulatory role in antigen-specific immune responses. To investigate specific roles of adhesion molecules in immune induction we coimmunized LFA-3 and ICAM-1 cDNAs with a gD plasmid vaccine and then analyzed immune modulatory effects and protection against lethal herpes simplex virus (HSV)-2 challenge. We observed that gD-specific IgG production was enhanced by LFA-3 coinjection. However, little change in IgG production was observed by ICAM-1 coinjection. Furthermore, both Th1 and Th2 IgG isotype production was driven by LFA-3. LFA-3 also enhanced Th cell proliferative responses and production of interleukin (IL)-2, interferon-gamma, IL-4, and IL-10 from splenocytes. In contrast, ICAM-1 showed slightly increasing effects on T-cell proliferation responses and cytokine production. beta-Chemokine production (RANTES, MIP-1alpha, and MCP-1) was also influenced by LFA-3 or ICAM-1. When animals were challenged with a lethal dose of HSV-2, LFA-3-coimmunized animals exhibited an enhanced survival rate, as compared to animals given ICAM-1 or gD DNA vaccine alone. This enhanced protection appears to be mediated by CD4+ T cells, as determined by in vitro and in vivo T-cell subset deletion. These studies demonstrate that adhesion molecule LFA-3 can play an important role in generating protective antigen-specific immunity in the HSV model system through increased induction of CD4+ Th1 T-cell subset.
Concurrent error detection in sequential circuits implemented using embedded memory of LUT-based FPGAs

We propose a concurrent error detection (CED) scheme for a sequential circuit implemented using both embedded memory blocks and LUT-based programmable logic blocks available in FPGAs. The proposed scheme is proven to detect each permanent or transient fault associated with a single input or output of any component of the circuit that results in an incorrect state or output of the circuit. Such faults are detected with no latency. The experimental results show that despite the heterogeneous structure of the proposed CED scheme, the overhead is very reasonable. For the examined benchmark circuits, the combined overhead, that accounts for both extra EMBs and extra logic cells, is in the range of 25.6% to 61.0%, with an average value of 38.6%.
RMIT University at TREC 2009: Web Track

Abstract : RMIT participated in the 2009 Web Track tasks. Our submissions utilised the Zettair search engine to index and search the Category B subset of the ClueWeb collection used by the Web Track. The Web Track was composed of two tasks, a traditional adhoc retrieval task, and a new diversity task where participants attempted to retrieve documents covering a range of sub topics for each query. Sub topics were not provided with the queries. Our experiments utilised the well known measures Okapi BM25 and language modeling with Dirichlet smoothing for the adhoc task. For the diversity task we attempted to improve the diversity of query results by minimising the number of documents returned for a single domain. Runs were generated using a customised version of the Zettair search engine which was adapted to deal with the large scale ClueWeb collection.
On the Structural Stability of U.S. GDP

The volatility of growth in U.S. real GDP declined dramatically in the mid-1980s. We characterize this phenomenon using a structurally stable model of GDP growth. The model characterizes growth as following non-linear trajectories that uctuate stochastically between alternative periods of general acceleration and deceleration. The speci c trajectories can di er across regimes due to randomness in the parameters that govern their behavior; but the underlying distribution from which these parameters are realized is stable. The model also allows the variance of growth-rate innovations to di er across regimes, as a function of their corresponding regime-speci c trajectories. We nd no evidence of a structural break when viewing GDP growth through the lens of this model. Moreover, using an encompassing exercise, we show that this model can account for the evidence favoring a structural-break interpretation of the volatility reduction that arises under linear autoregressive processes. The model also encompasses general patterns of business-cycle activity.
Delayed targeting of cytokine-nonresponsive human bone marrow CD34(+) cells with retrovirus-mediated gene transfer enhances transduction efficiency and long-term expression of transduced genes.

Primitive hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) are potential targets for treatment of numerous hematopoietic diseases using retroviral-mediated gene transfer (RMGT). To achieve high efficiency of gene transfer into primitive HPCs, a delicate balance between cellular activation and proliferation and maintenance of hematopoietic potential must be established. We have demonstrated that a subpopulation of human bone marrow (BM) CD34(+) cells, highly enriched for primitive HPCs, persists in culture in a mitotically quiescent state due to their cytokine-nonresponsive (CNR) nature, a characteristic that may prevent efficient RMGT of these cells. To evaluate and possibly circumvent this, we designed a two-step transduction protocol using neoR-containing vectors coupled with flow cytometric cell sorting to isolate and examine transduction efficiency in different fractions of cultured CD34(+) cells. BM CD34(+) cells stained on day 0 (d0) with the membrane dye PKH2 were prestimulated for 24 hours with stem cell factor (SCF), interleukin-3 (IL-3), and IL-6, and then transduced on fibronectin with the retroviral vector LNL6 on d1. On d5, half of the cultured cells were transduced with the retroviral vector G1Na and sorted on d6 into cytokine-responsive (d6 CR) cells (detected via their loss of PKH2 fluorescence relative to d0 sample) and d6 CNR cells that had not divided since d0. The other half of the cultured cells were first sorted on d5 into d5 CR and d5 CNR cells and then infected separately with G1Na. Both sets of d5 and d6 CR and CNR cells were cultured in secondary long-term cultures (LTCs) and assayed weekly for transduced progenitor cells. Significantly higher numbers of G418-resistant colonies were produced in cultures initiated with d5 and d6 CNR cells compared with respective CR fractions (P < .05). At week 2, transduction efficiency was comparable between d5 and d6 transduced CR and CNR cells (P > .05). However, at weeks 3 and 4, d5 and d6 CNR fractions generated significantly higher numbers of neoR progenitor cells relative to the respective CR fractions (P < .05), while no difference in transduction efficiency between d5 and d6 CNR cells could be demonstrated. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of the origin of transduced neoR gene in clonogenic cells demonstrated that mature progenitors (CR fractions) contained predominantly LNL6 sequences, while more primitive progenitor cells (CNR fractions) were transduced with G1Na. These results demonstrate that prolonged stimulation of primitive HPCs is essential for achieving efficient RMGT into cells capable of sustaining long-term in vitro hematopoiesis. These findings may have significant implications for the development of clinical gene therapy protocols.