Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How do misassigned paternities affect the estimation of heritability in the wild?

Studies of birds have recently played an important role in the increasing success of quantitative genetics applied to natural populations. However, these studies mostly base their pedigree relationships on social information, despite the known widespread genetic polygamy in avian species. Here, we study the influence of misassigned paternities, combined with the effect of pedigree size and depth, on the estimation of heritability. First, we compute simulations of a polygenic trait for two levels of heritability (0.1 and 0.4), several extra‐pair paternity rates (ranging from 5% to 40%), and varying sample sizes (20, 50 and 100 broods) or pedigree depth (2 or 4 generations). We compare heritability estimates from the social and the genetic pedigree, running a restricted maximum‐likelihood ‘animal model’. Social pedigree underestimates heritability by an average of 0–17% for 5–20% extra‐pair paternities and by up to 18% for 40% extra‐pair paternities and a heritability of 0.4. Second, we identifyied extra‐pair offspring using microsatellite loci in two populations of blue tits (Parus caeruleus) showing high levels of extra‐pair paternities (15% and 25% of extra‐pair offspring). We compare heritabilities of tarsus length and body mass estimated with pedigrees of increasing accuracy. These analyses suggest that the bias induced by misassigned paternities on heritability estimation depends on the level of heritability and the rate of paternity error. Typical rates of extra‐pair paternities in birds (around 20% of offspring) should result in an underestimation of heritability of less than 15% when estimated over a minimum of 100 broods.
A Retrospective Analysis of the Contribution of Reported Factors in Cochlear Implantation on Hearing Preservation Outcomes

Introduction Preservation of residual hearing is essential to perceive acoustic stimulation from hybrid cochlear implants (CI). Preservation is a good marker of atraumatic surgery and residual hearing may be exploited further or enhanced in future therapies, making complete hearing preservation a desirable goal for all current CI surgeries. There is large variability in the amount of hearing preserved and the timeframe over which it is lost after CI. The increase in numbers of patients with high levels of residual hearing at implantation means that understanding the variables affecting its preservation is more important than ever. Data Sources An English search term with generic and specific items concerning hearing preservation and cochlear implantation was searched on the Web of Science service. The search timeframe was limited to 2000 to 2014, with no language limitations on results. Study Selection Hearing preservation, retrospective CI outcome studies which reported pre- and post-surgical pure-tone audiometry (PTA) were identified and selected. Data Extraction PTA thresholds were extracted from audiograms or tables and converted into a low-frequency hearing preservation (LFHP) score. Data for 21 factors associated with hearing preservation were collected from studies. Data Synthesis Factors were included in a hearing preservation model if they had both a significant bivariate correlation with LFHP and a significant Kruskal-Wallis H test result (for ordinal data) or a significant multiple regression analysis result (for scale data). Conclusions Seven factors were found to have a significant effect on hearing preservation: insertion site, progressive versus stable hearing loss, insertion angle of electrode, use of intraoperative topical steroids, use of steroids (via any route/timing), hearing etiology, and electrode array type. The best hearing preservation options are given.
University of Birmingham Integrative physiological and behavioural responses to sudden cold-water immersion are similar in skilled and less-skilled swimmers

We examined the initial physiological responses and subsequent capacity to swim following cold-water immersion. An ecologically-valid model was used whereby immersion was sudden (<2 s) and participants had to actively remain afloat. Participants (15 skilled swimmers, 17 less-skilled) undertook four experimental test sessions: A physiological test and a swimming test in both cold (10 °C) and temperate (27 °C) water in a swimming flume (temperature order counter-balanced). For physiological testing, measures of brain perfusion [flow velocity (MCAv, Doppler) and oxygenation (NIRS)] and cardiorespiratory function [ventilation parameters and end-tidal PCO 2 (P ET CO 2 )] were recorded while treading water for 150 s. The swimming test involved treading water (150 s) before swimming at 60% (up to 120 s) and 90% (to intolerance) of pre-determined maximum velocity. Multifactorial analysis revealed swimming duration was influenced most heavily by water temperature, followed by respiratory variables and MCAv in the first 30 s of immersion. The time course and severity of cold shock was similar in both groups ( p =0.99), in terms of initial physiological changes (MCAv down ~20 ± 11%, respiratory frequency increased to 58 ± 18 breaths.min -1 , P ET CO 2 dropped to 12 ± 9 mmHg). Treading water following cold-water immersion increased MCAv by 30% above resting values despite maintained cold-shock-induced hyperventilation. In comparison to temperate water, swimming capacity was also reduced similarly between groups in the cold (i.e., distance decreased by 34 ± 26% skilled; 41 ± 33% less-skilled, p =0.99). These integrative findings verify that sudden cold-water immersion followed by physical activity leads to similar physiological responses in humans when contrasting between skilled and less-skilled swimmers.
A Monstrous Hybrid: The Political Economy of Housing in Early Twenty-first Century Sweden

In the leftist Western political imagination, Sweden continues, for many, to represent a vision of a ‘better’, more egalitarian political-economic model than the neoliberal capitalism that has come to dominate the Anglo-American world in particular; and its housing system is widely regarded as an integral component of this alternative, social-democratic model. The present paper argues that this envisioning of the political economy of Swedish housing is thoroughly outdated. Yet it insists, equally, that the competing envisioning of Swedish housing advanced by prominent scholars within Sweden – of a radically (neo)liberalised domestic housing system – is not accurate either. Rather, Swedish housing in the early twenty-first century constitutes a complex hybrid of legacy regulated elements on the one hand and neoliberalised elements on the other. Recognising this hybridity is essential, the paper submits, to understanding the nature and source of the most pressing issues facing the Swedish housing sector today. The system's hybridity, moreover, is ‘monstrous’ – following Jane Jacobs's coining of the term – in the sense that those issues reveal the pivotal role currently played by the Swedish housing system in the creation, reproduction and intensification of socio-economic inequality.
Gender influence on firm‐level entrepreneurship through the power structure of boards

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to examine the gender composition and structure of the board of directors in not‐for‐profit organisations and their relation to firm‐level entrepreneurship.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected through a survey sent to Swedish riding schools. The paper focuses on not‐for‐profit associations and the analysis is based on 60 respondents. The data were analysed by multivariate methods.Findings – The overall gender composition of boards had no influence on firm‐level entrepreneurship. However, a high proportion of women in powerful positions were found to have a positive influence on one of the study's two dimensions of firm‐level entrepreneurship, i.e. strategic opportunism. No influence concerning gender in powerful positions was found on risk taking, the other dimension of firm‐level entrepreneurship.Originality/value – The attention to gender composition not only focuses on the board at large, but also highlights the specific positions of the chairperson, s.
Benzodiazepines in the treatment of schizophrenia: a review and reappraisal.

OBJECTIVE Benzodiazepines, either alone or added to neuroleptics, have been studied extensively as treatments for schizophrenia, but no consensus regarding their efficacy has been reached. The authors review the double-blind trials in the literature and relate the findings to the neurobiology of benzodiazepine actions. METHOD The clinical review included all double-blind studies through 1989 that could be identified by means of Index Medicus and computer-assisted searches and by the cross-referencing of articles. The findings from the 14 studies of benzodiazepines used alone and the 16 studies of adjunctive therapy are presented separately. RESULTS The studies reviewed suggest that 1) response is highly variable, and about one-third to one-half of patients improve; 2) benzodiazepines are potentially most useful as adjuncts to neuroleptics in the acute management of psychotic agitation, although actual antipsychotic effects have also been observed in some patients; 3) relatively higher doses of benzodiazepines may be associated with better response; and 4) therapeutic effects, when seen, develop rapidly but diminish after several weeks in some patients. The authors explore the neurobiological bases of benzodiazepine action, which presumably underlie their efficacy in schizophrenia and may help explain the variability of response. CONCLUSIONS Future research on benzodiazepines in the treatment of schizophrenia should focus on features that predict response, the relation of dopamine or other neurotransmitter systems to therapeutic effects, the schizophrenic symptoms most amenable to benzodiazepine treatment, changes in neuroleptic dose during benzodiazepine augmentation, the role of benzodiazepines in maintenance therapy, and the optimal characteristics of benzodiazepine treatment.
High-performance floating-point computing on reconfigurable circuits. (Calcul flottant haute performance sur circuits reconfigurables)

Due to their potential performance and unmatched flexibility, FPGA-based accelerators are part of more and more high-performance computing systems. However, exploiting this flexibility for accelerating floating-point computations by manually using classical circuit description languages (VHDL or Verilog) is very difficult, and sometimes impossible. This thesis has contributed to the development of the FloPoCo software, a C++ framework for describing flexible FPGA-specific arithmetic operators. This framework explicitly separates the description of the combinatorial functionality of an arithmetic operator, and its pipelining for a given precision, operating frequency and target FPGA.In order to be able to use FloPoCo for designing high performance floating-point operators, we first had to design the optimized basic blocks. We first developed pipelined addition architectures exploiting the fast-carry lines present in modern FPGAs. Next, we focused on multiplication architectures. Using tiling techniques, we proposed novel architectures for large multipliers, but also truncated multipliers, based on the multipliers found in modern FPGA DSP blocks. We also present a generic FloPoCo operator which inputs the expression of a function, its input and output precisions, and builds an optimized polynomial evaluator for the fixed-point evaluation of this function. Using this building block we have designed floating-point operators for the square-root and exponential functions which significantly outperform existing operators. Finally, we also made use of advanced compilation techniques for adapting the execution of a C program to the flexible pipelines of our operators.
Surplus Consumption Ratio and Expected Stock Returns

Based on the Consumption{Based Asset Pricing Model (C)CAPM with habit formation of Campbell and Cochrane (1999), this paper provides empirical evidence in favour of the importance of habit persistence in asset pricing. Using U.S data, we show that the surplus consumption ratio is a strong predictor of excess returns at long{horizons and that it captures a component of expected returns, not explained by the consumption{wealth ratio. Moreover, this paper shows that the (C) CAPM with habit formation performs far better than the standard (C)CAPM in accounting for the cross{sectional variations in average excess returns on the 25 Fama{French portfolios sorted by size and book{to{market value.
Offline handwritten text recognition using support vector machines

Comenia script is a novel handwritten text introduced at primary schools in the Czech Republic. This paper describes a method for handwritten text recognition (HWR) of this font. In particular it proposes a method for preprocessing and normalization of data and optical character recognition based on SVM classifier. We have trained and statistically evaluated several models, where we have focused on recognition of different styles of writing of the same characters — for the forensic purposes and identification of the author of a document. The best model has achieved 92.86 % accuracy without any further postprocessing, e.g. a spellchecker. We also proposed using more than one classification model for character recognition that has shown to increase accuracy when compared to a single model approach.
The influence of a voluntary fee in the consumption of plastic bags on supermarkets from Madeira Island (Portugal)

Since 2007, some supermarkets in Portugal have voluntarily abolished the free distribution of plastic bags, implementing a symbolic charge of €0.02 each at the same time that others still offer free plastic bags. This study assesses the influence of this voluntary measure on the reduction of plastic bags consumption, comparing clients from supermarkets that have adopted it with others who have free distribution. The reutilisation of bags reached 37% in supermarkets where customers pay a fee and was absent in supermarkets where plastic bags are free. Even the abstention of using bags, when clients buy only few products, is significantly higher in supermarkets where there are charges for plastic bags. The 2 cents charged has also induced a significant increase in optimal use of plastic bags since 52% of clients that pay for plastic bags use them so they are almost full, but only 17% do the same when they are free. Taken together, the different effects of charging for plastic bags represents a potential reduction of 64%. A mandatory tax on plastic bags is an important measure to reduce substantially the number of plastic bags consumed and to improve sustainability through the reduction of environmental, economic and social costs of pollution and waste management.
Senior Poverty in Canada: A Decomposition Analysis

Cet article présente les résultats d’une analyse par décomposition des taux de pauvreté chez les personnes âgées que j’ai effectuée afin de déterminer si certaines caractéristiques des personnes âgées peuvent ou non expliquer les variations historiques de ces taux. J’ai fait cette analyse à partir des données de l’Enquête sur les finances des consommateurs (EFC) et de l’Enquête sur la dynamique du travail et du revenu (EDTR) portant sur les années 1977–1979, 1994–1996 et 2006–2008. Mes résultats montrent que, entre 1977 et 1979 et entre 1994 et 1996, un niveau d’instruction plus élevé était lié à des taux de pauvreté beaucoup moins élevés chez les personnes âgées. De plus, quand l’importance de l’âge et du fait d’avoir une vie autonome en tant que facteurs de risque liés à la pauvreté des personnes âgées diminue, les taux de pauvreté diminuent aussi substantiellement et significativement. Dans l’ensemble, ces résultats montrent que les politiques en matière de revenus de retraite constituent donc un déterminant important de la pauvreté des personnes âgées.
Class dependent feature transformation for intrusion detection systems

Most of intrusion detection systems use primary and raw input features which are extracted from network connection without any preprocessing on the extracted features. In this paper, we propose a new feature transformation method based on class dependent approach for improving the accuracy of intrusion detection systems. In usual class dependent feature transformation methods the mapping process is accomplished using different mapping matrices for different classes of the dataset. In these methods, there is a difference between the train and test phases. In the training phase of class-dependent methods, samples of each class is mapped only using the corresponding matrix, however, in the test phase, each sample is mapped using all of the transformed matrices. This may lead to some mistakes in classification. In this paper we modify the train and test phases on class dependent methods and propose a new linear feature transformation method. Unlike the usual class-dependent methods, the training and test phases of the proposed method are very similar. This similarity aids the classifier to learn more about dataset samples and transformation process. The performance of our proposed method is evaluated using three different indices, namely mutual information, maximum relevancy minimum redundancy criteria, and classification accuracy. The proposed method was evaluated on a benchmark intrusion detection dataset (NSL-KDD dataset). The experimental results demonstrate that applying the proposed feature transformation method leads to higher classification accuracy and makes the IDS more capable of distinguishing intruders from normal users.
Communication and Streaming Complexity of Approximate Pattern Matching

We consider the approximate pattern matching problem. Given a text T of length 2 n and a pattern P of length n , the task is to decide for each preﬁx T [1 , j ] of T if it ends with a string that is at the edit distance at most k from P . If this is the case, we must output the edit distance and the corresponding edit operations. We ﬁrst look at the communication complexity of the problem. We show the following: If Alice and Bob both share the pattern and Alice holds the ﬁrst half of the text and Bob the second half, then the deterministic one-way communication complexity of the problem is Θ( k log n ). If Alice holds the ﬁrst half of the text, Bob the second half of the text, and Charlie the pattern, then there is a deterministic one-way communication protocol that uses O ( k √ n log n ) bits. We then develop the ﬁrst sublinear-space streaming algorithm for the problem. There exists a streaming algorithm that solves the problem in O ( k 8 √ n log 6 n ) space. The worst-case time complexity of the algorithm O (( k 2 √ n + k 13 ) · log 4 n ) per arrival. The algorithm is randomised with error probability at most 1 / poly( n ).
Stock Index Futures Trading and Spot Market Volatility

This paper investigates possible spill-over effects on the Spot Market due to the initiation of Futures contracts. According to many analysts there still exists a puzzle regarding the stabilization or destabilization effects of futures contracts. Although the speculative forces (uninformed investors) tend to destabilize the market, rational hedging strategies and the transition of risk allow for stabilization shift. In order to investigate this issue, many researchers during the last decade, have utilized the GARCH framework enriched to capture many stylized financial features, such as the asymmetric response to news and leptokurtosis. However, in this paper the GARCH framework is extended to allow for skewness in the return's distribution and to examine the timing of possible structural changes, while the conditional mean of the process is adjusted to account for time-varying risk premia and for the day of the week effects decomposition. Furthermore, the distinguishing feature of this paper is the SWARCH econometric model, which enables a dynamic regime shifting through a Markov Chain transition matrix. According to the empirical findings on the FTSE-20/ASE futures contract, there exists a significant stabilization effect on the long run, while in the short run this seems to be non-robust.
Novel GaP-based dilute nitride Ga(NAsP)GaP laser material system

Realizing monolithic optoelectronic integrated circuits (OIECs) on silicon substrate would open up an exciting and completely new field of applications, i.e. optical interconnects at the chip level. In the past a lot of effort has been devoted to the growth of standard direct band gap III-V compound semiconductors on Si substrate, i.e. GaAs/Si or InP/Si. Due to the large lattice mismatch of these materials to the Si substrate large densities of threading dislocations are formed in the layers, preventing any long-term stable lasing operation of corresponding device structures. In this study the authors present a novel direct band gap material ( Ga(NAsP) ), which can be grown lattice-matched to GaP. Due to the similar lattice constant of GaP and Si, this novel material system might lead to the real monolithic integration of III/V-based optoelectronics and Si-based microelectronics in the near future
Two members of a widely expressed subfamily of hormone-stimulated adenylyl cyclases.

cDNA encoding a hormone- and guanine nucleotide-stimulated adenylyl cyclase [ATP pyrophosphate-lyase (cyclizing), EC 4.6. 1.1] (type 6) from rat liver and kidney has been cloned and expressed. This enzyme is stimulated by forskolin, guanosine 5'-[gamma-thio]triphosphate, and isoproterenol plus GTP but is not stimulated by beta gamma subunits of guanine nucleotide-binding proteins. A second form (type 5), which is 75% similar to type 6, has also been cloned. Both types 5 and 6 cDNAs have multiple messages. PCR-based detection of the mRNA for the type 5 and 6 enzymes indicates that both are widely distributed. Homology analyses indicate at least four distinct subfamilies of guanine nucleotide stimulatory protein-regulated adenylyl cyclases. Types 5 and 6 enzymes define one distinct subfamily of mammalian adenylyl cyclases. Diversity of one guanine nucleotide-binding protein-regulated effector may allow different modes of regulation of cell-surface signal transmission.
The Importance of Family Structure and Family Income on Family's Educational Expenditure and Children's College Attendance

Using the 1991-1998 Survey of Family Income and Expenditure, we analyzed the determinants of college attendance rates and educational expenditure among families with children in Taiwan, paying particular attention to the effects of family structure and family income. The findings indicate that higher family income is consistently associated with higher college attendance rates and spending on education. Children in single-parent families have lower college attendance rates than children in two-parent families. Furthermore, single-parent families spend less on education. When family income is taken into account, single-mother families are not significantly different from two-parent families on the outcome variables. Single-father families, however, are estimated to have significantly lower college attendance rates and educational expenditure after controlling for family income. These results suggest that improving the economic security of single-parent families will increase their children's attainment in single-mother families but will not eliminate the attainment gap between children in single-father and two-parent families.