Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating the external effects of subsidized housing investment on property values

1 Although housing advocates and urban policy makers promote housing investment as a tool for neighborhood improvement, there is relatively little empirical evidence suggesting that significant, much less substantial, external effects of subsidized housing investment exist. Previous research investigating the impact of subsidized housing investment aimed at blighted properties has been mixed, and the analyses have typically been hampered by limitations in both the data and the number of housing units or projects (" experiments ") available for study. This paper makes use of an extraordinarily rich and detailed data set to investigate the external effects of a large number of subsidized housing investment projects on the value of surrounding properties. In particular, we estimate the impacts of 66,000 new, publicly-assisted housing units produced in New York City between 1987 and 2000, as part of an ambitious program (the " Ten Year Plan ") that ultimately cost more than $5 billion and involved the construction or rehabilitation of over 182,000 units (Schill et al. 2001). Our empirical work relies on a unique, geo-coded administrative data set that includes detailed information on 293,786 sales of apartment buildings, condominium apartments and single-family homes in New York City between 1980 and 1999. These data allow us to estimate a difference-indifference specification of a hedonic regression model. Census tract fixed effects control for idiosyncratic characteristics of the micro-neighborhoods in which subsidized housing is sited. Intuitively, impact estimates are formed as the difference between price-changes of properties immediately surrounding city-assisted housing sites following their completion and price-changes of comparable properties in the same neighborhood, but beyond the vicinity of the new housing. Unlike previous work in this area, we estimate distance gradients to allow impacts to vary with 2 distance from city-assisted housing. We also investigate how effects vary across different submarkets – a question which has received little attention in the literature, despite its implications for public policy. The results are striking and robust. Prior to project construction, prices of properties surrounding city sites are lower than other properties in the same neighborhood, with price differentials larger for larger projects. After construction, the gap narrows considerably – price appreciation in the vicinity of new housing exceeds that in areas just beyond. The magnitudes of the external effects are found to increase with project size and to decrease with the proportion of units in multi-family, rental buildings. Consistent with expectations, we find that spillover effects …
Formation of Complexes at Plasmodesmata for Potyvirus Intercellular Movement Is Mediated by the Viral Protein P3N-PIPO

Intercellular transport of viruses through cytoplasmic connections, termed plasmodesmata (PD), is essential for systemic infection in plants by viruses. Previous genetic and ultrastructural data revealed that the potyvirus cyclindrical inclusion (CI) protein is directly involved in cell-to-cell movement, likely through the formation of conical structures anchored to and extended through PD. In this study, we demonstrate that plasmodesmatal localization of CI in N. benthamiana leaf cells is modulated by the recently discovered potyviral protein, P3N-PIPO, in a CI:P3N-PIPO ratio-dependent manner. We show that P3N-PIPO is a PD-located protein that physically interacts with CI in planta. The early secretory pathway, rather than the actomyosin motility system, is required for the delivery of P3N-PIPO and CI to PD. Moreover, CI mutations that disrupt virus cell-to-cell movement compromise PD-localization capacity. These data suggest that the CI and P3N-PIPO complex coordinates the formation of PD-associated structures that facilitate the intercellular movement of potyviruses in infected plants.
Lactobacillus GG prevents recurrence of colitis in HLA-B27 transgenic rats after antibiotic treatment

Background and aims:Bacteroides vulgatus induces colitis in gnotobiotic HLA-B27 transgenic (TG) rats while broad spectrum antibiotics prevent and treat colitis in specific pathogen free (SPF) TG rats although disease recurs after treatment ends. Lactobacilli treat human pouchitis and experimental colitis. We investigated if Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG (L GG) can prevent colitis in TG rats monoassociated with B vulgatus and if L GG or Lactobacillus plantarum 299v (LP 299v) can treat established colitis in SPF TG rats and prevent recurrent disease after antibiotics were stopped. Methods: Germfree B27 TG rats were monoassociated with B vulgatus for four weeks following two weeks of colonisation with L GG or no bacteria. SPF B27 TG rats received oral vancomycin and imipenem for two weeks, or water alone, followed by four weeks of treatment with oral L GG, LP 299v, or water only. Disease activity was quantified by blinded gross and histological scores, caecal myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, and levels of interleukin (IL)-1β, tumour necrosis factor (TNF), transforming growth factor β, and IL-10. Results:L GG did not prevent colitis in B vulgatus co-associated TG rats or treat established disease in SPF rats. However, L GG but not LP 299v prevented colitis relapse in antibiotic treated rats with reduced gross and histological scores, caecal MPO, IL-1β, and TNF whereas caecal IL-10 was increased. Conclusions:L GG does not prevent colitis in gnotobiotic TG rats or treat established disease in SPF rats, but is superior to LP 299v in the prevention of recurrent colitis. These studies suggest that antibiotics and probiotic agents provide synergistic therapeutic effects, perhaps mediated by altered immunomodulation with selective activity of different lactobacillus species.
Parametric emotional singing voice synthesis

This paper describes an algorithm to control the expressed emotion of a synthesized song. Based on the database of various melodies sung neutrally with restricted set of words, hidden semi-Markov models (HSMMs) of notes ranging from E3 to G5 are constructed for synthesizing singing voice. Three steps are taken in the synthesis: (1) Pitch and duration are determined according to the notes indicated by the musical score; (2) Features are sampled from appropriate HSMMs with the duration set to the maximum probability; (3) Singing voice is synthesized by the mel-log spectrum approximation (MLSA) filter using the sampled features as parameters of the filter. Emotion of a synthesized song is controlled by varying the duration and the vibrato parameters according to the Thayer's mood model. Perception test is performed to evaluate the synthesized song. The results show that the algorithm can control the expressed emotion of a singing voice given a neutral singing voice database.
Distribution and Functional Characterization of Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporter-4, a Novel Cardiac Adenosine Transporter Activated at Acidic pH

Adenosine plays multiple roles in the efficient functioning of the heart by regulating coronary blood flow, cardiac pacemaking, and contractility. Previous studies have implicated the equilibrative nucleoside transporter family member equilibrative nucleoside transporter-1 (ENT1) in the regulation of cardiac adenosine levels. We report here that a second member of this family, ENT4, is also abundant in the heart, in particular in the plasma membranes of ventricular myocytes and vascular endothelial cells but, unlike ENT1, is virtually absent from the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes. Originally described as a monoamine/organic cation transporter, we found that both human and mouse ENT4 exhibited a novel, pH-dependent adenosine transport activity optimal at acidic pH (apparent Km values 0.78 and 0.13 mmol/L, respectively, at pH 5.5) and absent at pH 7.4. In contrast, serotonin transport by ENT4 was relatively insensitive to pH. ENT4-mediated nucleoside transport was adenosine selective, sodium independent and only weakly inhibited by the classical inhibitors of equilibrative nucleoside transport, dipyridamole, dilazep, and nitrobenzylthioinosine. We hypothesize that ENT4, in addition to playing roles in cardiac serotonin transport, contributes to the regulation of extracellular adenosine concentrations, in particular under the acidotic conditions associated with ischemia.
fMRI Adaptation between Action Observation and Action Execution Reveals Cortical Areas with Mirror Neuron Properties in Human BA 44/45

Mirror neurons (MNs) are considered to be the supporting neural mechanism for action understanding. MNs have been identified in monkey’s area F5. The identification of MNs in the human homolog of monkeys’ area F5 Broadmann Area 44/45 (BA 44/45) has been proven methodologically difficult. Cross-modal functional MRI (fMRI) adaptation studies supporting the existence of MNs restricted their analysis to a priori candidate regions, whereas studies that failed to find evidence used non-object-directed (NDA) actions. We tackled these limitations by using object-directed actions (ODAs) differing only in terms of their object directedness in combination with a cross-modal adaptation paradigm and a whole-brain analysis. Additionally, we tested voxels’ blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) response patterns for several properties previously reported as typical MN response properties. Our results revealed 52 voxels in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG; particularly BA 44/45), which respond to both motor and visual stimulation and exhibit cross-modal adaptation between the execution and observation of the same action. These results demonstrate that part of human IFG, specifically BA 44/45, has BOLD response characteristics very similar to monkey’s area F5.
Diagnostic Approach to Pupillary Abnormalities

Purpose of Review:This article presents an overview of the common and various kinds of pupillary disorders that can be encountered in an outpatient setting. Recent Findings:The dorsal midbrain is a site where lesions may produce either an afferent or an efferent pupillary defect. The classic pupillary syndrome secondary to a dorsal midbrain lesion is bilateral light-near dissociation. Another recognized deficit is bilateral mydriasis. Recent reports have documented unilateral mydriasis, unilateral light-near dissociation, and a relative afferent pupillary defect without visual loss in association with lesions of the dorsal midbrain. These are rare syndromes. Summary:Careful history and examination can often identify and localize the pupillary disorder, as well as guide appropriate evaluation.
Recherche de documents similaires sur le web par segmentations hiérarchiques et extraction de mots-clés

La recherche de documents similaires est un processus qui consiste a trouver les documents presentant des similitudes, comme la copie ou la reformu- lation, sur des bases documentaires ou sur internet. Elle est utilisee notamment pour proteger la propriete intellectuelle de productions issues de l'enseignement, de la recherche ou de l'industrie. Dans cet article, nous definissons une approche automatique pour permettant d'extraire des mots-cles d'un document en effec- tuant un bouclage sur une succession de decoupage de plus en plus petit. Cette approche permet d'obtenir des mots-cles impossibles a obtenir par une approche globale notamment quand la thematique, le style ou le contenu d'un document varient dans le document. L'objectif est de permettre la detection des documents presentant des similitudes en utilisant uniquement des mots-cles.
The Priority position paper: Protecting Europe's food chain from prions

ABSTRACT Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) created a global European crisis in the 1980s and 90s, with very serious health and economic implications. Classical BSE now appears to be under control, to a great extent as a result of a global research effort that identified the sources of prions in meat and bone meal (MBM) and developed new animal-testing tools that guided policy. Priority (www.prionpriority.eu) was a European Union (EU) Framework Program 7 (FP7)-funded project through which 21 European research institutions and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) joined efforts between 2009 and 2014, to conduct coordinated basic and applied research on prions and prion diseases. At the end of the project, the Priority consortium drafted a position paper (www.prionpriority.eu/Priority position paper) with its main conclusions. In the present opinion paper, we summarize these conclusions. With respect to the issue of re-introducing ruminant protein into the feed-chain, our opinion is that sustaining an absolute ban on feeding ruminant protein to ruminants is essential. In particular, the spread and impact of non-classical forms of scrapie and BSE in ruminants is not fully understood and the risks cannot be estimated. Atypical prion agents will probably continue to represent the dominant form of prion diseases in the near future in Europe. Atypical L-type BSE has clear zoonotic potential, as demonstrated in experimental models. Similarly, there are now data indicating that the atypical scrapie agent can cross various species barriers. More epidemiological data from large cohorts are necessary to reach any conclusion on the impact of its transmissibility on public health. Re-evaluations of safety precautions may become necessary depending on the outcome of these studies. Intensified searching for molecular determinants of the species barrier is recommended, since this barrier is key for important policy areas and risk assessment. Understanding the structural basis for strains and the basis for adaptation of a strain to a new host will require continued fundamental research, also needed to understand mechanisms of prion transmission, replication and how they cause nervous system dysfunction and death. Early detection of prion infection, ideally at a preclinical stage, also remains crucial for development of effective treatment strategies.
Dynamic Traffic Grooming in WDM Optical Networks with Full Wavelength Conversion and Grooming Devices on Max-Connectivity Nodes

Traffic grooming is applied to WDM optical networks with the intent of provisioning lower rate connection requests onto lightpaths with higher rate. Traffic grooming problem is an optimization problem which mainly focuses on minimization of network cost through minimizing the devices used in the network. Our work focuses on dynamic traffic grooming with full wavelength conversion. In this paper, we propose a heuristic approach to solve dynamic GRWA problem in WDM optical mesh networks with grooming devices only on Max-connectivity nodes. We provide first fit wavelength assignment procedure. We have compared our results with other grooming schemes and succeeded in showing that Max-connectivity grooming is more cost effective with similar blocking probability than other grooming schemes.
Polynomial-Time Hierarchy of Computable Reals

In mathematics, various representations of real numbers have been investigated and all these representations are proved to be mathematically equivalent. Furthermore, it is known that all effective versions of these representations lead to the same class of "computable real numbers". However, when subrecursive (such as primitive recursive) is taken into account, these representations can lead to different notions of "computable real numbers". This paper will look into the polynomial-time version of the problem for computable real numbers under different representations. We will summarize the known results to exhibit the comprehensive hierarchy they form. Our goal is to clarify systematically how the polynomial-time computability depends on the representations of the real numbers.
Unavoidable Selection Effects in the Analysis of Faint Galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field: Probing the Cosmology and Merger History of Galaxies

We present a detailed analysis of the number count and photometric redshift distribution of faint galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), paying special attention to selection effects, including the cosmological dimming of the surface brightness of galaxies, under the observational conditions employed in this field. We find a considerably different result from previous studies that ignore selection effects; these effects should therefore be taken into account in the analysis. We find that the model of pure luminosity evolution (PLE) of galaxies in the Einstein-de Sitter (EdS) universe predicts much smaller counts than those observed at faint magnitude limits, by a factor of more than 10, so that a very strong number evolution of galaxies with η ≳ 3-4 must be invoked to reproduce the I814 counts, when parametrized as ϕ* ∝ (1 + z)η. However, we show that such a strong number evolution under realistic merging processes of galaxies cannot explain the steep slope of the B450 and V606 counts, and it is seriously inconsistent with their photometric redshift distribution. We find that these difficulties still persist in an open universe with Ω0 ≳ 0.2, and are resolved only when we invoke a Λ-dominated flat universe, after examining various systematic uncertainties in modeling the formation and evolution of galaxies. The present analysis revitalizes the practice of using faint number counts as an important cosmological test, giving one of the arguments against the EdS universe, and suggests acceleration of the cosmic expansion by vacuum energy density. While a modest number evolution of galaxies with η ≲ 1 is still necessary even in a Λ-dominated universe, a stronger number evolution with η > 1 is rejected from the HDF data, giving a strong constraint on the merger history of galaxies.
Detection of cisoids using least square error function

In this paper, we propose a new hypothesis testing method for detection of cisoids (complex sinusoids) from a single measurement of data. The testing is performed on the least square error. The least square error is shown to exhibit /spl chi/ /sup 2/ distribution, which leads to an efficient threshold setup for the proposed method. The new method is a combined detection-estimation technique and provides improved performance over several existing techniques.
Connecting Litigation Levels and Legal Mobilization: Explaining Interstate Variation in Employment Civil Rights Litigation

Social science research on civil litigation has concentrated either on explaining variations in aggregate litigation levels or on explaining individual-level mobilization of the law. This article attempts to connect the two approaches by analyzing variations in state-level employment civil rights litigation within a framework based on individual-legal decisionmaking. Because the structure of our court system forces individuals to consider the costs and benefits of pursuing litigation, the model developed here incorporates factors that would affect individuals' cost/benefit decisionmaking with regard to civil rights litigation. The multivariate regression model based on this framework explains, with increasing strength, much of the state-level variation in civil rights litigation levels for the years 1970, 1975, and 1980. Although the framework has certain limitations, it may serve to enhance our understanding of aggregate litigation levels.
Evaluation-Based Reasoning with Disjunctive Information in First-Order Knowledge Bases

Abstract In previous work, Levesque proposed anevaluation-based reasoning procedure for so-called proper KBs, equivalent to a possibly in-complete possibly inﬁnite set of function-freeground literals. The procedure, called V ; pre-served the efﬁciency and logical soundness ofdatabase query evaluation. Moreover, if thequery was constrained to be in a special normalform, V was also logically complete. In this pa-per, we propose an extension to this work to han-dle disjunctive information in a KB. We deﬁnea query evaluation procedure X that generalizes V to deal with KBs that are equivalent to a pos-sibly inﬁnite set of function-free ground clauses.Deductive reasoning that is logically sound andcomplete in this case is undecidable in general,and so, we describe what we are willing to giveup in X to preserve tractability. 1 Introduction It was argued in [8] that the only procedure yet proposedto perform deductive reasoning effectively over extremelylarge ﬁrst-order knowledge bases (KBs) (involving say
Living in the Wake of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Long-Term Oxygen Therapy

Background: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the fourth leading cause of death in the world. COPD is a progressive disease that could lead to chronic hypoxemia, which requires treatment as domiciliary Long-Term Oxygen Therapy (LTOT). There is a need for increased knowledge about self-care strategies used by individuals living with COPD and LTOT. Objective: The aim was to explore experiences and self-care strategies in patients living with both COPD and LTOT. Sample: The sample consisted of five men and five women diagnosed with COPD being prescribed LTOT for more than one year. Method: Ten interviews were undertaken and analyzed for both manifest and latent content. Results: Living with COPD and LTOT was associated with experiences of guilt although there were doubts about what had caused the lung disease. Both the lung disease and the oxygen therapy had a negative impact on their self-image. Anxiety was expressed when thoughts about the remaining time occurred. There was a constant balance between diminishing abilities and increasing restrictions related to the lung disease and the therapy. In order to compensate for arising imbalance, self-care strategies had been initiated aimed at preserving the present state of health, enabling and facilitating physical activity and promoting a positive attitude. Conclusion: The current study suggests that individuals living with COPD and LTOT are encouraged to adopt self-care strategies directed towards maintaining stability with regard to the lung disease, the oxygen therapy, physical capability and emotional reactions.
Urban Structure and the Differentiation Between Blacks and Whites

In this study some of the determinants of black assimilation into large United States cities are examined. Assimilation is treated as a multidimensional phenomenon, the various dimensions of which are attributes of organized populations. A structural model is developed and analyzed, using the technique of path analysis, in which other attributes of urban social structures are related to the various dimensions of assimilation. Analysis suggests that the dimensions of assimilation are causally interrelated, with educational assimilation a major determinant of income assimilation, both directly and indirectly through its effects upon occupational assimilation. However, other attributes of organized urban populations also make important direct and indirect contributions to assimilation. Of special importance is percent of the city's population that is black and the rate of black population growth. Surprisingly, ghettoization is not very important causally when compared with other variables in the system, a significant negative finding in view of current emphasis upon this factor. This analysis suggests that greater attention be paid to organizational dimensions of urban populations as a means of specifying the processes underlying the assimilation of blacks.
ADAPTIVE ALGORITHMS FOR ACOUSTIC ECHO CANCELLATION IN SPEECH PROCESSING

Adaptive filtering constitutes one of the core technologies in digital signal processing and finds numerous application areas in science as well as in industry. Adaptive filtering techniques are used in a wide range of applications, including echo cancellation, adaptive equalization, adaptive noise cancellation, and adaptive beamforming. Acoustic echo cancellation is a common occurrence in today’s telecommunication systems. The signal interference caused by acoustic echo is distracting to users and causes a reduction in the quality of the communication. This paper focuses on the use of LMS and NLMS algorithms to reduce this unwanted echo, thus increasing communication quality.