Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Price-Linked Subsidies and Health Insurance Markups

Subsidies in many health insurance programs depend on prices set by competing insurers – as prices rise, so do subsidies. We study the economics of these “price-linked” subsidies compared to “fixed” subsidies set independently of market prices. We show that price-linked subsidies weaken competition, leading to higher markups and raising costs for the government or consumers. However, price-linked subsidies have advantages when insurance costs are uncertain and optimal subsidies increase as costs rise. We evaluate this tradeoff empirically using a model estimated with administrative data from Massachusetts’ health insurance exchange. Relative to fixed subsidies, price-linking increases prices by up to 6% in a market with four competitors, and about twice as much when we simulate markets with two insurers. For levels of cost uncertainty reasonable in a mature market, we find that the losses from higher markups outweigh the benefits of price-linking.
The Detection and the Neural Correlates of Behavioral (Prior) Intentions

Prior intentions are abstract mental representations that are believed to be the prime cause of our intentional actions. To date, only a few studies have focused on the possibility that single prior intentions could be identified in people's minds. Here, for the first time, we used the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) in order to identify a specific prior intention on the basis of a pattern of associations derived from reaction times (Experiment 1). The aIAT is based on two critical blocks: the block associating intentions with true sentences (congruent block) gave rise to faster reaction times (RTs) than the block associating intentions with false sentences (incongruent block). Furthermore, when comparing intentions with hopes, it was revealed that the reported effect was intention-specific: The pattern of associations reflected a congruency effect when intentions and the logical category “True” were paired, but not when hopes and the “True” category were paired (Experiment 2). Finally, we investigated the neural bases of the congruency effect that leads to the identification of an intention (Experiment 3). We found a reduced late positive component (LPC) for the incongruent with respect to the congruent block, suggesting that the incongruent block needs additional resources of cognitive control with respect to the congruent block.
Functionally distinct hematopoietic stem cells modulate hematopoietic lineage potential during aging by a mechanism of clonal expansion

Aging of the hematopoietic stem cell compartment is believed to contribute to the onset of a variety of age-dependent blood cell pathophysiologies. Mechanistic drivers of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) aging include DNA damage accumulation and induction of tumor suppressor pathways that combine to reduce the regenerative capacity of aged HSCs. Such mechanisms do not however account for the change in lymphoid and myeloid lineage potential characteristic of HSC aging, which is believed to be central to the decline of immune competence and predisposition to myelogenous diseases in the elderly. Here we have prospectively isolated functionally distinct HSC clonal subtypes, based on cell surface phenotype, bearing intrinsically different capacities to differentiate toward lymphoid and myeloid effector cells mediated by quantitative differences in lineage priming. Finally, we present data supporting a model in which clonal expansion of a class of intrinsically myeloid-biased HSCs with robust self-renewal potential is a central component of hematopoietic aging.
Humoral and cellular immunity in secondary infection due to murine Chlamydia trachomatis

A murine model of pneumonia due to the mouse pneumonitis agent (MoPn [murine Chlamydia trachomatis]) in mice deficient in CD4+ T-cell function (major histocompatibility complex [MHC] class II function [class II-/-], CD8+ T-cell function (beta2-microglobulin deficient, MHC class I deficient [Beta2m-/-]), B-cell function (C57BL/10J-Igh(tm1Cgn) [Igh-/-]), and gamma interferon (IFN-gamma) (C57BL/6-Ifg(tm1) [Ifg-/-]) or interleukin-4 (C57BL/6J(tm1Cgn29) [IL4-/-]) production was employed to determine if each of these mechanisms was critical to resistance against reinfection by C. trachomatis or if alternate compensatory mechanisms existed in their absence which could potentially be exploited in vaccine development. Resistance to reinfection with MoPn was heavily dependent on CD4+ T cells. CD4 T-cell-deficient MHC class II-/- mice were very susceptible to reinfection with MoPn, showing the critical importance of this cell to resistance. These mice lacked antibody production but did produce IFN-gamma, apparently by mechanisms involving NK and CD8+ T cells. Neutralization of IFN-gamma in these mice led to a borderline increase in susceptibility, showing a possible role (albeit small) of this cytokine in this setting. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) was also present at increased levels in these mice. Igh-/- B-cell-deficient mice which produce no antibody to MoPn were only modestly more susceptible to reinfection than immunized B-cell-intact controls, showing that antibody, including lung immunoglobulin A, is not an absolute requirement for relatively successful host defense in this setting. Levels of lung IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha were elevated in Igh-/- mice compared to those in controls. IL-4-/- mice (deficient in Th2 function) could develop normal resistance to reinfection with MoPn. Conversely, normal mice rendered partially IFN-gamma deficient by antibody depletion were somewhat impaired in their ability to develop acquired immunity to MoPn, again indicating a role for this cytokine in host defense against rechallenge. Of most importance, however, congenitally IFN-gamma-deficient Ifg-/- mice (which have elevated levels of other cytokines, including TNF-alpha and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor) are paradoxically more resistant to MoPn rechallenge than controls, showing that IFN-gamma is not an absolute requirement for acquired resistance and implying the presence of very effective compensatory host defense mechanism(s). In vivo depletion of TNF-alpha significantly increased MoPn levels in the lungs in these mice. Thus, resistance to reinfection in this model is flexible and multifactorial and is heavily dependent on CD4+ T cells, with a probable role for IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha and a possible modest role for Th1-dependent antibody. Since IFN-gamma was dispensable in host defense, the highly effective mechanism or mechanisms which can compensate for its absence (which include TNF-alpha) deserve further study.
On Verbal/Nonverbal Modality Dependence of Left and Right Inferior Prefrontal Activation during Performance of Flanker Interference Task

One of the most prevailing views on the functional localization of human cognition is the hemispheric specialization, wherein the left and right hemispheres are implicated primarily in verbal and nonverbal functions, respectively. Cognitive control is known to involve the lateral prefrontal cortex. However, it remains unclear whether the hemispheric specialization in the lateral prefrontal cortex can be observed in cognitive control per se, independent of sensory aspects of stimulus materials. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we tested whether the verbal/nonverbal hemispheric specialization applies to the lateral prefrontal activation by investigating interference suppression, the ability to filter out irrelevant information in the environment. The flanker task was employed using a compound stimulus that contained a target and a flanker. The flanked stimulus was either a color word flanked by a colored patch or a colored patch flanked by a color word, which allowed us to manipulate the modality of the presented flanker stimulus from which interference originates, keeping the total stimulus modality balanced. The inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) showed prominent Modality-by-Hemisphere interaction in interference suppression, the left IFG being activated when a word flanker (plus a patch target) was presented and the right IFG being activated when a patch flanker (plus a word target) was presented. These results suggest that the verbal/nonverbal hemispheric specialization in the IFG can be explained by cognitive control processes per se, independent of sensory aspects of presented materials.
New scaling rules for MMI devices

Multimode Interference (MMI) devices have found wide use in photonic integrated circuits as couplers, multiplexers, switches and filters, as well as performing other useful signal processing functions. In the past, first order design formulae for such devices have relied on using simplifying assumptions that are not very accurate. The designer typically then uses repeated field simulations, varying the geometrical and material parameters in order to improve the predicted performance. The results are usually limited to a single specific device and therefore cannot easily be generalised. The purpose of this paper is to look at MMI structures in a more general way and so derive a minimal parameter set that still adequately describes the behaviour of the device. This is achieved without making over-simplified approximations. Using this new scaling approach 1) identifies the most important parameters; 2) provides a better starting point for the design process; 3) enables the designer to gain deeper insight into the effect on performance of parameter variations; and 4) leads to new methods for optimising the design of MMI devices.
Fine Mapping of a cis-Acting Sequence Element in Yellow Fever Virus RNA That Is Required for RNA Replication and Cyclization

ABSTRACT We present fine mapping of a cis-acting nucleotide sequence found in the 5′ region of yellow fever virus genomic RNA that is required for RNA replication. There is evidence that this sequence interacts with a complementary sequence in the 3′ region of the genome to cyclize the RNA. Replicons were constructed that had various deletions in the 5′ region encoding the capsid protein and were tested for their ability to replicate. We found that a sequence of 18 nucleotides (residues 146 to 163 of the yellow fever virus genome, which encode amino acids 9 to 14 of the capsid protein) is essential for replication of the yellow fever virus replicon and that a slightly longer sequence of 21 nucleotides (residues 146 to 166, encoding amino acids 9 to 15) is required for full replication. This region is larger than the core sequence of 8 nucleotides conserved among all mosquito-borne flaviviruses and contains instead the entire sequence previously proposed to be involved in cyclization of yellow fever virus RNA.
Trajectory optimization using time-separating strategy with improved PSO on mechanical arms

In order to research the way to increase the efficiency of 6-DOF articulated manipulator, a technique of optimal trajectory planning is presented. The robot's key positions were presented by a series of postures in robot linkable model, which can be transformed into joint space as composed of value points of joints, each adjacent value points were connected by a period of B-spline curves. According to the robot's mechanical structure features and joints' drive modes, a strategy that divides six joints waist, shoulder, elbow and another three axis into two time-searching groups with different fitness functions in order to adjust the optimum focus is proposed in this paper. The modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) with crossover operator is utilized to optimize the joint trajectories. The experiment results verify the rationality and the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Collaborative object grouping in graphics editing systems

Object grouping is an effective means for managing the complexity in graphics editing. However, research on collaborative object grouping has not been adequate. In this paper, we contribute a novel collaborative object grouping technique, called CoGroup. CoGroup can achieve maximal combined effects among compatible operations and preserve all users' work in the face of conflict without the overhead of undoing and redoing conflict operations as in existing serialization approaches. CoGroup has been implemented in collaborative word processing (CoWord) and slide authoring (CoPowerPoint) systems and is generally applicable to a range of off-the-shelf commercial graphics applications, particularly CAD/CASE tools
Is It Possible to Discriminate Between Neoplastic and Nonneoplastic Lesions in Ulcerative Colitis by Magnifying Colonoscopy?

Background:Colitis-associated cancer/dysplasia is an intestinal tract condition that can affect the life expectancy of patients with ulcerative colitis. It is often difficult to detect neoplastic lesions. This study evaluated whether any endoscopic features are effective for distinguishing colitis-associated cancer/dysplasia from nonneoplastic lesions in patients with ulcerative colitis. Methods:The study involved 52 patients with 61 lesions treated at Hiroshima University Hospital between September 1999 and May 2012: 10 patients with 11 dysplastic lesions, 5 patients with 5 intramucosal carcinomas, 3 patients with 3 submucosal carcinomas, and 34 patients with 42 nonneoplastic lesions. All patients had undergone targeted biopsy. Endoscopic findings were compared between patients with biopsy-determined neoplasia and those with biopsy-determined nonneoplasia. Multivariate regression analysis was performed to identify magnifying chromocolonoscopy features predictive of neoplasia. Results:No significant difference was found in conventional endoscopy features between the neoplastic and nonneoplastic lesions. Under magnifying chromocolonoscopy, the pit density of the neoplastic lesions was found to be significantly greater than that of the nonneoplastic lesions (89% [17/19] versus 60% [25/42], respectively). Pit margins were more frequently irregular in the neoplastic lesions than in the nonneoplastic lesions (63% [12/19] versus 33% [14/42], respectively). Conclusions:In differentiating between colitis-associated neoplastic and nonneoplastic lesions, focus should be on the high residual density of pits and irregular pit margins observed under magnifying chromocolonoscopy.
RNN Approaches to Text Normalization: A Challenge

This paper presents a challenge to the community: given a large corpus of written text aligned to its normalized spoken form, train an RNN to learn the correct normalization function. We present a data set of general text where the normalizations were generated using an existing text normalization component of a text-to-speech system. This data set will be released open-source in the near future. We also present our own experiments with this data set with a variety of different RNN architectures. While some of the architectures do in fact produce very good results when measured in terms of overall accuracy, the errors that are produced are problematic, since they would convey completely the wrong message if such a system were deployed in a speech application. On the other hand, we show that a simple FST-based filter can mitigate those errors, and achieve a level of accuracy not achievable by the RNN alone. Though our conclusions are largely negative on this point, we are actually not arguing that the text normalization problem is intractable using an pure RNN approach, merely that it is not going to be something that can be solved merely by having huge amounts of annotated text data and feeding that to a general RNN model. And when we open-source our data, we will be providing a novel data set for sequence-to-sequence modeling in the hopes that the the community can find better solutions. The data used in this work have been released and are available at: this https URL
Relation of early childhood growth and wheezing phenotypes to adult lung function

Several studies have reported associations between indicators of birth size and postnatal growth rates with levels of pulmonary function achieved as adults. The objective of this study was to determine if levels and/or rates of weight gain, measured in early life (birth‐6 years), are associated with FVC or FEV1 levels achieved in young adulthood and if these associations differ by early childhood wheezing phenotypes.
Finite-State Model Predictive Current Control for Surface-Mounted Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors Based on Current Locus

Finite-state model predictive control (FS-MPC) is computationally expensive, as it uses all voltage vectors available for prediction and estimation. This paper proposes a novel finite-state model-based predictive current control (MPCC) scheme to overcome the drawbacks of FS-MPC. A reference frame based on the prediction of the current locus when a zero-voltage vector is employed is established to reduce the computational requirements; specifically, only one zero-voltage vector must be predicted compared with the seven required in conventional FS-MPC. The selection of the optimal voltage vector is based on the direction of the current locus in the established reference frame instead of a cost function, which is necessary and time consuming in conventional FS-MPC. Zero-voltage vectors are also selected by contrasting the distance between the reference and predictive currents to reduce the torque ripple of the proposed method. Simulation and experimental results are presented and confirm the efficient performance of the proposed MPCC.
Politicking the personal: examining academic literature and British National Party beliefs and wishes about intimate interracial relationships and mixed heritage

Drawing heavily on our earlier work in this area (Perry and Sutton 2006; forthcoming), this article discusses the issue of intimate interracial relationships (IIRs) within the context of the UK Government's current concerns with social cohesion and provides an overview of the literature on hate and prejudice against those in IIRs in the UK and USA. Following an examination of the official statistics and the numbers of mixed race people in England and Wales, we move on to provide a brief but disturbing glimpse of what it would mean if the BNP's long-term dream of winning a national election were actually to happen in light of their official website published proposed policies against IRRs and mixed heritage people.
Similar efficacies of biliary, with or without pancreatic, sphincterotomy in treatment of idiopathic recurrent acute pancreatitis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS The role of sphincter of Oddi manometry (SOM) in the management of patients with idiopathic recurrent acute pancreatitis requires clarification. We evaluated the therapeutic effects of endoscopic sphincterotomy in patients with recurrent acute pancreatitis and the prognostic significance of pancreatic sphincter dysfunction (SOD). METHODS We performed a randomized trial of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography with SOM for patients with idiopathic recurrent acute pancreatitis. Patients with pancreatic SOD (n = 69) were assigned randomly to groups that received only biliary sphincterotomy (BES) or a combination of biliary and pancreatic sphincterotomy (DES); patients who underwent normal SOM (n = 20) were assigned randomly to groups that received BES or a sham surgery. The primary outcome was incidence of recurrent acute pancreatitis during the follow-up period (minimum, 1 year; maximum, 10 years). We also determined the incidence of chronic pancreatitis and analyzed factors associated with recurrence of acute pancreatitis. RESULTS Among the 69 patients with SOD, 48.5% who received BES and 47.2% who received DES had recurrent acute pancreatitis (95% confidence interval, -22.3 to 24.9; P = 1.0). In patients with normal SOM (n = 20), 27.3% of those who received BES and 11.1% of those who received the sham surgery had recurrent acute pancreatitis (95% confidence interval, -49.5 to 17.2; P = .59). Overall, 16.9% of subjects developed chronic pancreatitis during a median follow-up period of 78 months (interquartile range, 35-108 mo). The odds of recurrent acute pancreatitis during follow-up evaluation were significantly greater among patients with SOD than those with normal SOM (unadjusted hazard ratio, 3.5; 95% confidence interval, 1.07-11.4; P < .04), and remained so after adjusting for potential confounders (hazard ratio, 4.3; 95% confidence interval, 1.3-14.5; P < .02). CONCLUSIONS Among patients with pancreatic SOD, DES and BES have similar effects in preventing recurrence of acute pancreatitis. Pancreatic SOD is an independent prognostic factor, identifying patients at higher risk for recurrent acute pancreatitis. CLINICAL TRIALS REGISTRATION Clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01583517).
A Centralized Clustering Geographic Energy Aware Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are deployed in areas we are interested in to help users to retrieve raw data. Due to the limited power, it is desired that data retrieving routing protocols are energy efficient, and energy consumption can be balanced among all nodes so that lifetime of WSNs can be prolonged. In this paper, we propose a centralized clustering geographic energy aware routing (GEAR-CC) for wireless sensor networks. It has the dominance of both hierarchical routing and geographic energy aware routing. As a centralized algorithm, it takes full advantage of base station's sufficient power to conduct every transmission in the wireless sensor network. In GEAR-CC, the base station can easily formulate the optimal transmitting schemes for all sensor nodes based on the global information of topology and energy. The optimization is achieved by making trade-off between energy cost and node's residual power. Simulation results show that GEAR-CC can dramatically balance residual energy of each node to avoid hot-spot phenomenon, and the time the first cluster dies in network using GEAR-CC is about 1.57 times of clustering direct transmission routing and 1.32 times of cluster-head-to-cluster-head (CH-to-CH) routing.