Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discriminative and Compact Coding for Robust Face Recognition

In this paper, we propose a novel discriminative and compact coding (DCC) for robust face recognition. It introduces multiple error measurements into regression model. They collaborate to tune regression codes of different properties (sparsity, compactness, high discriminating ability, etc.), to further improve robustness and adaptivity of the regression model. We propose two types of coding models: 1) multiscale error measurements that produces sparse and highly discriminative codes and 2) inspires within-class collaborative representation that produces sparse and compact codes. The update of codes and the combination of different errors are automatically processed. DCC is also robust to the choice of parameters, producing stable regression residuals which are crucial to classification. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets show that DCC has promising performance and outperforms other state-of-the-art regression models.
Denosumab, a RANK Ligand Inhibitor, for Postmenopausal Women with Osteoporosis

OBJECTIVE: To review the evidence for use of denosumab for the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis. DATA SOURCES: A search of MEDLINE and EMBASE databases was conducted during January 2012, using the terms denosumab and osteoporosis, with index dates of 2000 to 2011. Additional information was gathered from Amgen and references cited in articles retrieved. STUDY SELECTION AND DATA EXTRACTION: English-language articles including clinical trials involving denosumab for treatment of osteoporosis and review articles were reviewed. Articles using denosumab in males or as treatment for conditions other than osteoporosis or osteopenia were excluded. DATA SYNTHESIS: Many clinical trials have supported the safety and efficacy of denosumab in postmenopausal women with bone loss. It has been shown to improve bone mineral density, decrease markers of bone turnover, and prevent new vertebral fractures. It shows improvement over placebo in studies and has at least similar efficacy to alendronate in measurements of bone mineral density, with less risk for osteonecrosis of the jaw and atypical fracture, but with an increased risk of infections and neoplasms. European cost-effectiveness studies have also demonstrated that denosumab is a cost-effective choice compared to risedronate and no treatment for fracture prevention for postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. CONCLUSIONS: Denosumab has demonstrated efficacy and safety as a first-line treatment for postmenopausal osteoporosis in multiple clinical trials over at least 6 years. It may be most cost-effective for women who are unable or refuse to take bisphosphonate drugs.
The Importance of Slack for New Organizations Facing ‘Tough’ Environments

Strategy-based models centre on the management of unique and valuable resources to take advantage of specific market opportunities. Less examined in this approach are the roles of slack resources in the process of generating firm value – particularly for new firms in ‘tough’ environments where fewer opportunities are available. Using a cohort panel of 951 new manufacturing firms over nine years, our findings provide evidence for the importance of financial slack resources in understanding opportunity generation and also for reconciling theoretical arguments regarding the slack resource–performance link. We find that while financial slack does provide buffering capacity (in hostile and dynamic environments), and flexibility for experimentation (in munificent and dynamic environments) as suggested by prior theory, the most positive relationship between financial slack and performance for new firms was in low discretion environments (hostile and stable environments) – where firms need to develop their own opportunities. The implications of these findings for theory are discussed.
EVA’s and REVA’s relative and growing information on benefit predictions in Tehran stock exchange market accepted companies

The current research tries to introduce economic evaluation standards to the users and to increase the EVA’s and REVA’s relative and growing information content on benefit predictions. To reach this goal, the present research was done by testing 6 hypotheses in Tehran Stock Exchange Market during 1996 to 2008. Pearson correlation coefficient, determination coefficient and simple linear and multi-variable regression analyses were used for the data statistical analysis and testing the research hypothesis tests. Results from research hypothesis tests show that there is a significant relation between EVA and REVA on one hand and operating profit on the other. Also, EVA and REVA have increased information content. Normal 0 false false false RU X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Обычная таблица"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
How Congress Does the Difficult

Legislators in democratic countries find it relatively easy to do certain things. For example, they typically have little problem reducing taxes or increasing benefits for a majority of citizens. However, should they attempt to raise taxes or cut benefits for the majority, they will probably encounter opposition, even if taking such measures is necessary for the public good. How members of democratically elected legislatures manage to accomplish unpopular and politically difficult tasks is worth examining. In this article, I illustrate how members of the U.S. Congress have “done the difficult”–i.e., passed laws or instituted programs, often in the public interest, that were unpopular with the voters or would have been were they known to the public–and consider why the legislators were able to take the actions they did. Determining how members of Congress make unpopular but necessary policy decisions is difficult because members themselves will not emphasize when they deviate from the public's will and how they are able to do so. After all, most of them are more interested in getting reelected than in being perceived as courageous and resourceful statesmen. Even the most civic-minded legislator may avoid calling attention to unpopular votes after realizing cynical and skeptical voters are unlikely to reward him for making difficult choices in the public's interest. Consequently, to reduce the likelihood that the action will be highlighted, unpopular legislation is often enacted in obscure and technical ways.
Comparison of the efficacy and safety of 2% lidocaine HCl with different epinephrine concentration for local anesthesia in participants undergoing surgical extraction of impacted mandibular third molars

Background: The most commonly impacted tooth is the third molar. An impacted third molar can ultimately cause acute pain, infection, tumors, cysts, caries, periodontal disease, and loss of adjacent teeth. Local anesthesia is employed for removing the third molar. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of 2% lidocaine with 1:80,000 or 1:200,000 epinephrine for surgical extraction of bilateral impacted mandibular third molars. Methods: Sixty-five healthy participants underwent surgical extraction of bilateral impacted mandibular third molars in 2 separate visits while under local anesthesia with 2% lidocaine with different epinephrine concentration (1:80,000 or 1:200,000) in a double-blind, randomized, crossover trial. Visual analog scale pain scores obtained immediately after surgical extraction were primarily evaluated for the 2 groups receiving different epinephrine concentrations. Visual analog scale pain scores were obtained 2, 4, and 6 hours after administering an anesthetic. Onset and duration of analgesia, onset of pain, intraoperative bleeding, operator's and participant's overall satisfaction, drug dosage, and hemodynamic parameters were evaluated for the 2 groups. Results: There were no statistically significant differences between the 2 groups in any measurements except hemodynamic factors (P >.05). Changes in systolic blood pressure and heart rate following anesthetic administration were significantly greater in the group receiving 1:80,000 epinephrine than in that receiving 1:200,000 epinephrine (P ⩽.01). Conclusion: The difference in epinephrine concentration between 1:80,000 and 1:200,000 in 2% lidocaine liquid does not affect the medical efficacy of the anesthetic. Furthermore, 2% lidocaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine has better safety with regard to hemodynamic parameters than 2% lidocaine with 1:80,000 epinephrine. Therefore, we suggest using 2% lidocaine with 1:200,000 epinephrine rather than 2% lidocaine with 1:80,000 epinephrine for surgical extraction of impacted mandibular third molars in hemodynamically unstable patients.
Corruption in US states: the effects of socio-economic factors

This study is an empirical examination of socio-economic determinants of corruption in US states. Using the data on state-by-state number of corruption convictions from the US Department of Justice as the dependent variable, socio-economic factors such as income inequality, education level and ethnic diversity are investigated. First, we find that US states with higher education level are generally less corrupt when corruption is defined on the basis of convictions. Second, the hypothesis arguing that greater income inequality is associated with higher levels of corruption is supported by our empirical findings. Third, the study shows some evidence that high levels of ethnic diversity positively affect corruption rates. Finally, the study provides strong evidence that the states with greater populations have lesser corruption. Using corruption convictions data, these results echo the findings of the many cross-national studies relying on the data on corruption perception.
Human Resource Management, Job Satisfaction, Morale, Optimism, and Turnover

ABSTRACT This article examines the usage of nine human resource management (HRM) practices among 46 hotels in San Diego. Results showed that the hotels in the sample use training and development to bring employees up to an acceptable level of performance, and then rely on allowing employee a voice to keep them engaged. Usage of HRM varied by hotel types (e.g., resorts vs. economy), and the practices had a statistically significant relationship with job satisfaction, morale, and optimism about the future of the hotel. These attitudes, in turn, were significantly related to turnover intentions. Implications of the results are discussed.
Cerebellar‐induced Locomotion: Reticulospinal Control of Spinal Rhythm Generating Mechanism in Cats a

Abstract: In a decerebrate cat (locomotor preparation), stimulation of a restricted region along the midline cerebellar white matter has been found to evoke generalized augmentation of postural muscle tone on a stationary surface (Asanome et al. 1998. Neurosci. Res. 30: 257‐269) and “controlled” locomotion on the surface of a moving treadmill. Characteristics of cerebellar‐evoked locomotion were similar to those of mesencephalic locomotor region‐evoked “controlled” locomotion on the same animal. Microinjection of a neural tracer (CTb‐HRP) into the lesioned stimulus site of the cerebellar white matter resulted in both retrograde labeling of cells in the fastigial nuclei, bilaterally, and anterograde labeling of fibers descending to the brain stem. These results indicated that the effective cerebellar stimulus site (cerebellar locomotor region) corresponded to the midline region of the hook bundle of Russell (Rasmussen, A. T., 1933. J. Comp. Neurol. 57: 165‐197), through which crossed fastigioreticular, fastigiovestibular, and fastigiospinal fibers pass. In this study, contribution of reticulospinal systems to the control of cerebellar‐evoked locomotion was extensively studied. By stimulating the cerebellar locomotor region and the MLR in the same animal, a majority of antidromically identified pontomedullary reticulospinal cells were synaptically activated. The results of the present study demonstrated that fastigial cells with crossed fastigioreticular fibers and reticulospinal fibers play a crucial role in the control of posture and locomotion in the locomotor preparation.
The Law of the Shrinking Middle: Inequality of Earnings in Australia 1975-1989

International evidence shows a marked increase in the dispersion of earnings since the 1970s. In this paper the authors review some of this research. Earnings data for Australia indicate that since 1975, the distribution of earnings became significantly less equal there too. This cannot be entirely accounted for by the growth of part-time employment, cyclical influences, demographic change or greater labor market flexibility. In Australia in 1983 an "Accord" was reached between employers, unions and government. One stated aim of this incomes policy was to bring about an equitable redistribution of income, but it did not in fact reverse the trend to rising earnings inequality. On some measures the growth of inequality actually accelerated after 1983, particularly for women working full-time. Copyright 1992 by Scottish Economic Society.
Intertemporal volatility and price interactions between Australian and Japanese spot and futures stock index markets

Previous studies have examined causality within and between different spot and futures markets with a motivation to discover market comovements, price leadership effects, and, more recently, volatility spillovers across markets. However, the empirical framework within which this is accomplished tends not to analyze explicitly foreign spillover effects upon a spot–futures relationship, which may significantly alter the equilibrium between these markets. This will then have a direct impact upon the estimation of dynamic risk adjustments that occur from the interaction between these markets. This article develops a quadvariate simultaneous‐equation EC‐ARCH model with an emphasis on volatility spillovers as a better alternative methodology to evaluate these relationships from a different perspective. This model is applied to examine the interaction between the Australian and Japanese spot and futures stock index markets, which allows for an Australian or Japanese futures trader to analyze the impact of foreign cash and futures markets, as well as the local cash market, on the local futures market in a single coherent framework. This type of analysis is not possible using previous paradigms, because they allow the trader only to examine the impact of local cash and foreign futures markets in separate settings. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 19: 523–540, 1999
Economics of a supercloud

A Supercloud is a "CrossCloud": It is an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) that goes beyond federated or hybrid clouds and gives its users direct control over cloud deployments--even across different underlying cloud providers (Jia et al. 2015). It supports privileged cloud operations such as migration across autonomous cloud providers even if they use different virtual machine monitors, networking, and storage infrastructure. For instance, a user can start a virtual machine instance in the Google cloud (Google Compute Engine), migrate it live to the Amazon cloud (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud), live migrate it again to the Microsoft cloud (Microsoft Azure), then finally live migrate it to a private cloud (e.g. a Eucalyptus or OpenStack based cloud). Moreover, a user can have a deployment that simultaneously exists over various combination of cloud providers, then change the placement at any time. To support such privileged operations and customizations across many different cloud providers, the Supercloud provides virtual machine, storage, and networking complete with a full set of management operations, allowing applications to optimize performance across different underlying cloud providers.
Optimal placement of FBG sensors for reconstruction of flexible plate structures using modal approach

An optimization method based on mode approach and improved genetic algorithms is developed for optimal FBG sensors placement in health monitoring and reconstruction of flexible thin-plate structure. The optimization objective is to obtain a kind of placement of FBG sensors which has the best reconstruction effects. The structure is modeled using Finite Element methods and modal analysis is carried out to create a modal space which provides data for both shape-reconstruction and error-calculation. The optimization is performed by improved genetic algorithm that uses the mean square error of reconstruction for the comparison of different optimal solution candidates. FBG sensors were arranged on the structural surface and experiment with an optimized sensor placement were performed to verify the effectiveness of the method and the simulation results.
Financing of land purchase by small‐scale farmers

Binswanger attributes the problem facing poor people in financing land purchase to the inclusion of a real capital gains component in the price of land. This article attributes it largely to a cash flow problem which arises from positive inflation rates. The Ricardian rent return to land in South African agriculture is estimated at between 4 and 5 per cent while the Land Bank's interest rate is 15 per cent. Interest payments on a bond can therefore not be met from rents to land alone. If, as an extreme situation, the expected inflation rate were zero, farmers might have been able to borrow funds at 4 to 5 per cent. To bring debt servicing in line with projected cash flows in the real situation, mortgage interest rates could be subsidised; or, in an alternative affirmative action, the state could contribute towards the purchase price of land. These alternatives are discussed.
Institutional Design and the Closure of Public Facilities in Transition Economies

As part of the reforms of their systems for financing and delivering health care, many transition economies, particularly in central and eastern Europe, have adopted national insurance funds that are institutionally separate from ministries of health. Most of these countries have also grappled with the problem of restructuring the delivery system, especially the need to reduce hospital capacity. Although improving the performance of medical care providers through a shift from passive budgeting to explicitly incentive mechanisms is important, why this change in financial relations between the government and providers could not be implemented simply by reforming the role of health ministries is not obvious. This paper presents an explicit rationale for the separation of powers between the regulator (the ministry of health) and the financing body (the insurance fund), based on the inability of a single agency to commit to closing hospitals.
Investigations of the genomic region that contains the clf1 mutation, a causal gene in multifactorial cleft lip and palate in mice.

BACKGROUND Human nonsyndromic cleft lip and palate, CL(P), is genetically complex, with one contributing gene on chromosome 17q. A potentially homologous gene, clf1 on distal chromosome 11, is part of the digenic cause of the 10-30% CL(P) in the A/WySn mouse strain. Here we report our progress toward identifying the clf1 mutation. METHODS Transcription from all of the known and predicted genes in the 1.5-Mb candidate region was examined in A/WySn and control (AXB-4/Pgn) ED10-11 embryo heads. The marker haplotype for 28 inbred strains across the clf1 region was obtained. The entire transcripts of Wnt9b and Wnt3 in A/WySn were sequenced. Using long PCR, the genomic region from Wnt3 throughWnt9b was screened in A/WySn for an inserted retrotransposon. RESULTS Gosr2, Wnt9b, Wnt3, Nsf, Arf2, Crhr1, Mapt, Cdc27, Myl4, Itgb3, chr11_20. 152, chr11_20. 154, chr11_20. 155, and chr11_20. 156 are expressed in ED10-11 heads. None is absent or detectably reduced in A/WySn. The ancestral pre-clf1 mutation haplotype was found in CBA/J mice. By a test-cross, CBA/J was confirmed to lack the clf1 mutation. Three single-nucleotide variants in A/WySn (vs. C57BL/6J) were found in each of the 3' untranslated regions (3'UTRs) of Wnt3 and of Wnt9b, respectively; their presence in CBA/J shows that none are the clf1 mutation. An inserted intracisternal A particle (IAP) retrotransposon located 6.6 kb from the 3' end of Wnt9b was found in A/WySn and in all clf1 strains tested. This IAP is absent in C57BL/6J and CBA/J. CONCLUSIONS The clf1 mutation is a genomic alteration present in A/WySn and absent in the ancestral chromosomal segment in CBA/J. The IAP retrotransposon insertion near Wnt9b in A/WySn fits this criterion; we predict that interference with Wnt9b function by this IAP is the clf1 mutation.
Forest Owners’ Willingness to Accept Compensation for Voluntary Conservation: A Contingent Valuation Approach

To avoid conflicts often associated with mandatory regulations, it is crucial to motivate and incentivize forest owners to participate in voluntary conservation programs. To investigate forest owner preferences and willingness to accept compensation (WTA) to participate, we conduct a contingent valuation survey of non-industrial private forest owners in Norway. We find that WTA is negatively related to the size of the forest holding and absentee ownership, and positively related to the share of the forest classified as productive. The overall mean WTA per year per hectare is estimated at NOK 1800. Costs of reaching conservation goals can be saved by targeting small and relatively less productive forests and absentee owners first, before considering increasingly expensive forest areas. However, this recommendation only holds if desirable biological characteristics are not substantially less likely to be found in such areas. Results are potentially important both for our understanding of forest owner preferences and the costs of voluntary forest conservation schemes currently in use in many countries.