Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of U.S. Farml and in Real Estate Portfolios

Executive Summary. Farmland is seen as a longterm investment that receives investor attention in many countries and potentially provides added value in a mixed-asset portfolio. Using the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF) farmland series, this paper analyses the risk-adjusted performance and port-folio diversification benefits of farmland in the United States over the 1984-2006 period. Recent years have seen significantly enhanced returns for U.S. farmland, with a slight reduction in risk; however, there has been some loss of portfolio diversification benefits for farmland with stocks and real estate.
Earnings and Education Among Self-employed Males in Colombia*

Economics of education The theoretical cornerstone of the economics of education is productivity differences between workers with more or less education. However, given the difficulty of directly measuring worker productivity, empirical estimates have typically relied on earnings differences by level of education. Although such approximation may be valid in competitive labour market environments, it has understandably been criticised in the literature as having limited applicability in non-competitive economic environments. By restricting the observations to those in self-employment activities, one better approximates the elusive productivity differential. The self-employed simply receive as pay the true worth of what they produce (net of the returns to other factors they may use, like capital and raw materials). To put it in other words, focusing on the labour earnings of the self-employed corresponds to a natural, non-econometric shadow pricing of education as a factor of production.
Multimodal approach in assessment of the response of breast cancer to neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Abstract. The ability for noninvasive visualization of functional changes of a tumor’s oxygenation and circulatory system offers new advantages for prognosis and monitoring of the treatment efficacy. The results of breast cancer oxygen state study under chemotherapy action obtained by diffuse optical spectroscopy (DOS) in combination with Doppler ultrasonic imaging are presented. Complex use of optical and ultrasound methods gives complementary information about the size of the tumor node, peculiarities of its vascular bed, rate of its blood flow as well as oxygenation, and provide a picture of the tumor response to treatment. Comparison with tumor pathologic response allowed to identify differences in the changes of these parameters depending on the degree of pathological tumor response to chemotherapy. It was demonstrated that fourth and fifth degrees of therapeutic pathomorphism may be predicted by the increase of oxygen saturation level after the first cycle of chemotherapy. If the reduction or absence of the oxygen saturation dynamics is observed, first or second degree of pathological tumor response can be expected. Additional ultrasound investigation of the tumors may be useful for observation of the dynamics of tumor blood flow thereby for understanding the reasons of induced chemotherapy oxygenation changes. The proposed approach based on DOS and ultrasonography may be applied for monitoring of breast tumors under therapy and prediction of their sensitivity.
Does the Consumption CAPM Help in Accounting for Expected Currency Returns

The Consumption Capital Asset Pricing Model (CCAPM) has been widely rejected on the basis of its implausibly large estimates of risk aversion, despite numerous modifications to its specification of risk preferences. This study instead relaxes the assumption of perfect foresight (REH), and uses survey data on traders' exchange rate forecasts to test whether the expected premium is related to the covariance between the exchange rate and consumption. The covariance is measured through the novel use of rolling-windows of the realized covariance. Interestingly, the model is able to account for expected returns with more plausible degrees of risk aversion, but only once using backward-looking rolling measures of the covariance, suggesting market participants infer about the future covariance based on experience from the recent past. There is also evidence that inclusion of the real exchange rate improves the plausibility of the estimates and the model fit.
The 3D transient semiconductor equations with gradient-dependent and interfacial recombination

We establish the well-posedness of the transient van Roosbroeck system in three space dimensions under realistic assumptions on the data: non-smooth domains, discontinuous coefficient functions and mixed boundary conditions. Moreover, within this analysis, recombination terms may be concentrated on surfaces and interfaces and may not only depend on charge-carrier densities, but also on the electric field and currents. In particular, this includes Avalanche recombination. The proofs are based on recent abstract results on maximal parabolic and optimal elliptic regularity of divergence-form operators.
Association of pentraxin and high-sensitive C-reactive protein as inflammatory biomarkers in patients with chronic periodontitis and peripheral arterial disease

Context: Inflammation is a common feature of both peripheral artery disease (PAD) and periodontal disease. Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between PAD and periodontal disease by examining the levels of inflammatory cytokines, pentraxin-3 (PTX-3), and high-sensitive C-reactive protein from serum. Materials and Methods: A total of 50 patients were included in this cross-sectional study. Patients were divided into two groups: those with PAD (test group) and those with the non-PAD group (control group) based on ankle–brachial index values. Periodontal examinations and biochemical analysis for PTX-3 and high-sensitive C-reactive protein were performed to compare the two groups. Statistical Analysis Used: All the obtained data were sent for statistical analyses using SPSS version 18. Results: In the clinical parameters, there is statistically significant difference present between plaque index, clinical attachment loss, and periodontal inflammatory surface area with higher mean values in patients with PAD having periodontitis. There is statistical significant (P < 0.01) difference in all biochemical parameters (P < 0.05) considered in the study between PAD patients and non-PAD patients with higher mean values of total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), high-sensitive C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and PTX-3. Conclusion: PTX-3 and acute-phase cytokine such as hs-CRP can be regarded as one of the best indicators to show the association between the PAD and periodontitis followed by hs-CRP, TC, very LDL (VLDL), and LDL. However, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) is a poor indicator for its association with chronic periodontitis and PAD.
Improving adherence to gout therapy: an expert review

Gout is the most common form of inflammatory arthritis and is a considerable burden to patients and health care systems worldwide. Despite its clinical, economic, and social impact, patient persistence and adherence to prescribed urate-lowering therapies (ULT), ranging from 20% to 70%, is considered to be among the poorest of all chronic conditions. The majority of gout patients consequently receive suboptimal benefits of their prescribed pharmacotherapies. As gout is associated with several comorbidities along with an increased risk of premature mortality, achieving improved outcomes through adherence to ULT is crucial. Adherence to medication is complex and multidimensional and includes a combination of treatment-, patient-, and physician-related factors. This review explores the factors related to ULT adherence with the overall aim of helping health care providers better understand the barriers to adherence. Several interventions targeting pharmacists, nurses, and patients are being investigated to improve adherence. Furthermore, enhanced awareness and understanding of the need to treat-to-target in order to improve patient outcomes is needed among health care professionals. Greater understanding of the multidimensional nature of non-adherence can help physicians to treat gout more effectively and empower patients to improve self-management of this long-term disease.
The corruption-inflation nexus: evidence from developed and developing countries

Abstract This paper analyzes the relationship between corruption and inflation for a sample of 100 developing and developed countries representing five regions (Americas, Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia Pacific) over the period 2000–2012. Various model estimations are carried out using alternative techniques and two indicators of corruption. Our findings provide evidence of a significant and positive relationship between all country corruption measures and inflation. Countries with a corrupted environment and bad governance use seigniorage as a source of revenue which induces higher monetary expansion and therefore higher inflation rates. After controlling for money supply, our results suggest that corruption is affecting inflation via other channels. Our results show also that the negative effect of corruption on inflation is different across subsample countries. The lack of sound and committed institutions in developing and emerging is a key point in explaining these disparities.
Germline genome-wide association studies in women receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for breast cancer is widely utilized, and we performed genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to determine whether germ-line genetic variability was associated with benefit in terms of pathological complete response (pCR), disease-free survival, and overall survival in patients entered on the NSABP B-40 NAC trial, wherein patients were randomized to receive, or not, bevacizumab in addition to chemotherapy. Patient DNA samples were genotyped with the Illumina OmniExpress BeadChip. Replication was attempted with genotyping data from 1398 HER2-negative patients entered on the GeparQuinto NAC study in which patients were also randomized to receive, or not, bevacizumab in addition to chemotherapy. A total of 920 women from B-40 were analyzed, and 237 patients achieved a pCR. GWAS with three phenotypes (pCR, disease-free survival, overall survival) revealed no single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that were genome-wide significant (i.e. P⩽5E−08) signals; P values for top SNPs were 2.04E−07, 5.61E−08, and 5.63E−08, respectively, and these SNPs were not significant in the GeparQuinto data. An ad-hoc GWAS was performed in the patients randomized to bevacizumab (457 patients with 128 pCR) who showed signals on chromosome 6, located within a gene, CDKAL1, that approached, but did not reach, genome-wide significance (top SNP rs7453577, P=2.97E−07). However, this finding was significant when tested in the GeparQuinto data set (P=0.04). In conclusion, we identified no SNPs significantly associated with NAC. The observation, in a hypothesis-generating GWAS, of an SNP in CDKAL1 associated with pCR in the bevacizumab arm of both B-40 and GeparQuinto requires further validation and study.
Space creation for a missing central incisor using functional and fixed appliances

Children with an overjet of more than 6 mm are three times more likely to receive trauma to their upper incisors than children with an average overjet. This could be complicated with avulsion of permanent incisor and with space loss for the tooth. Functional appliances are usually used to treat Class II skeletal pattern and increased overjet in growing patients. The following is a case in which the Twin Block functional appliance was used, while its classic design was modified to treat a Class II skeletal problem and to open a space for a missing maxillary central incisor.
Bayesian Inference in Regression Models with Ordinal Explanatory Variables

This paper considers Bayesian inference procedures for regression models with ordinally observed explanatory variables. Taking advantage of a latent variable interpretation of the ordinally observed variable we develop an efficient Bayesian inference procedure that estimates the regression model of interest jointly with an auxiliary ordered probit model for the unobserved latent variable. The properties of the inference procedure and associated MCMC algorithm are assessed using simulated data. We illustrate our approach in an investigation of gender based wage discrimination in the Swedish labor market and find evidence of wage discrimination.
The Impact of Curriculum Content and Community Support on Primary Schools’ Academic Achievement in Central Nyanza Region, Kenya

Performance of primary schools in Kenya Certificate of Primary Education Examinations (KCPE) in Central Nyanza has been poor over the years. This has contributed to frustrations among parents, teachers, and community. This is because KCPE results are used for secondary school placement and other accountability purposes. The study sought to establish whether the curriculum content and parent/community support determine primary schools’ academic achievement. The study was guided by the Transaction Theory of Teaching/Learning. The area of study was Central Nyanza Region, in the Counties of Siaya and Kisumu. The study employed the mixed methods approach and was conducted using descriptive survey design. The instruments used to collect data included questionnaire, interview guides and observation checklist. The sample was selected using stratified. Data was collected from 136 schools where 136 head teachers and 493 teachers were respondents. The author interviewed 36 teachers. The unit of analysis was primary schools` teachers`. The data was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics, such as measures of central tendency and percentages, were used to analyse the data. The General Linear Model was used to test the hypotheses. The level of significance was 0.05. The study found that the curriculum content influenced achievement. Another factor which determined schools’ academic achievement was the parent/community support. The study recommended that syllabus coverage should be monitored regularly and the schools should be provided with adequate resources necessary for curriculum implementation such as classrooms. The community should also support teaching and learning in schools by encouraging their children to attend school regularly.
Long Term Follow-Up Results of a Fractional Radio Frequency Ablative Treatment of Acne Vulgaris and Related Acne Scars

Introduction: Acne vulgaris and acne scarring are prevalent conditions that can have a negative effect on a patient’s quality of life. Fractional radiofrequency technologies have been shown to be clinically safe and effective in managing acne scars through dermal remodeling without causing direct damage to the epidermis. In a recently published study, we presented our clinical and histological results in the treatment of patients with active acne and acne related scarring using a Fractional RF (FRF) device. In the current article we demonstrate long term follow-up results, up to two years post last fractional treatment. Methods: Four out of the eight patients who completed a four treatment regimen were invited for long term follow-up visit to document treatment results. In some cases, touch-up treatments were conducted to optimize clinical results. Results: Patients demonstrated significant improvement of acne lesions, acne scarring, pores and skin texture. Long term photos demonstrated that clinical improvement progressed with time. Conclusion: The current study further supports the previous findings that FRF is a safe and effective treatment modality for active acne and acne related scars. Treatment protocol can be customized according to patient needs and clinical results last for long term.
Why Does the Yield Curve Predict Economic Activity?: Dissecting the Evidence for Germany and the United States

This paper investigates why the slope of the yield curve predicts future economic activity in Germany and the United States. A structural VAR is used to identify aggregate supply, aggregate demand, monetary policy and inflation scare shocks and to analyse their effects on the real, nominal and term premium components of the term spread and on output. In both countries demand and monetary policy shocks contribute to the covariance between output growth and the lagged term spread, while inflation scares do not. As the latter are more important in the United States, they reduce the predictive content of the term spread in that country. However, the main reason for the stronger leading indicator property in Germany is the positive contribution of supply shocks, which owing to a different monetary policy response explains about half of the positive covariance at lag four in Germany and almost nothing in the United States.
Dynamical Analysis of a Discrete-time Plant-Larva-Adult ( PLA ) Model with Allee Effect on the Plant Vijayalakshmi

In this paper, we formulate a discrete-time Plant-Larva-Adult (PLA) model with Allee effect on the plant population. We developed a model that captures the basic features of the interaction between a flowering plant and an insect with a larval stage that feeds on the plant’s vegetative tissues (e.g. leaves) and an adult pollinator stage. The fixed points were computed and criteria for stability of the system were obtained. Time series plots were obtained for different sets of parameter values. The numerical simulations not only illustrate the validity of our results, but also exhibit more complex dynamical behaviours.
Organisational Business History Influences on the Development of Corporate Reputation: An Institutional Theory Approach

This document presents a plan to examine how organizational business history influences the development of corporate reputation from historical institutionalism perspective. In order to accomplish this task, this proposal has been delineated into seven sections.The first section introduces the study by taking a look at the trend in organizational business history and the anecdotal linkages between these phenomena. The review of literature in this part leads towards the conceptualisation of a number interrelated research questions, which will guide this research.The second section gives a brief insight into historical institutionalism and the third and fourth examines the methodology and data analytical methods to be deployed in the course of this study. Section five presents a research plan highlighting the publications that would be generated from this study. Section six gives a description of the contributions that would emerge from this research. The study ends in section seven with a summary of the issues discussed.
OpuS: Fair and Efficient Cache Sharing for In-Memory Data Analytics

We study the fair cache allocation problem in shared cloud environments, where many users and applications contend for the main memory to cache shared datasets or files. Unlike other resources such as CPUs and networks, in-memory caches can be non-exclusively shared across many users, e.g., a cached columnar dataset queried by many Spark SQL jobs. This results in a unique challenge of the "free-riding" problem, where a user lies about its caching preferences to trick other users to cache files for it, using their allocated cache space. We show that existing cache allocation policies either suffer from such manipulations or result in poor efficiency. To address this problem, we propose a new cache allocation algorithm, termed OpuS, or Opportunistic Sharing for high efficiency. We show that OpuS provides performance isolation between users and is strategy-proof against "free-riding" manipulations. We have implemented OpuS as a pluggable cache manager in Alluxio, a popular memory-centric filesystem. Cluster deployment and trace-driven simulations demonstrate that OpuS allocates each user a fair share of caches while achieving near-optimal efficiency in cache utilization.
An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship between Speculation and Price Stability in a Floating Foreign Exchange Market

ing from speculators' net profit positions and looking at price movements in a foreign exchange market, Professor Friedman asserts that perhaps speculators' influences could be considered destabilizing if their effects were to result in a wider variance of exchange rates, than would be true if speculative activity had not been present. The issue as to whether speculators make profits on the average of their transactions, although an interesting question, will not be analyzed in this paper. Instead, the author's inquiry will focus on the question as to whether empirical evidence may provide a basis for rejecting or accepting the latter hypothesis. In earlier studies regarding the relationship between speculation and price stability, the view was taken that the above relationship could, in a partial equilibrium analysis, be reduced to the two variable case, whereby price stability or instability could be determined by observing directional movements between the expected price and the current price. (3) As noted by Nicolas Kaldor, in his early pioneering study of speculation, questions concerning price stability or instability could be analyzed in terms of current and expected prime move ments. For instance, in the case of inelastic expectations '' if the expected price is taken as given, speculation must necessarily exert a stabilizing influence: a rise in the current price will be followed by a fall in speculative stocks and vice versa. "(4) The reasoning behind this is that a rise in the current price would mean a fall in the ratio of the expected to current price. And as a result, *Paper delivered at the Graduate Student Session of the American Economic Association Meeting in Detroit, December 28, 1970. Mr. Dominguez is a graduate student at M. I. T. He I is indebted to Professor J. Bhagwati D. Foley, C. Kindleberger, E. Kuh, E. Solow, P. Samuel son and L. Ehurow, all of whom read this manuscript in some stage of preparation and made helpful suggestions. Nevertheless, the sole responsibility of all errors remains that of the author. 3 Sage Publications Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to The American Economist