Tracing the income-fertility nexus: Nonparametric Estimates for a Panel of Countries

We apply the a nonparametric method of kernel regression on a dataset for 109 countries to estimate the income fertility nexus in demo-economic transition. The results suggest the existence of a critical level of per capita income above which fertility decreases exponentially with rising income. For income levels below fertility stays on a high level and its relation to income is of minor significance. The critical income threshold changes over time and is lower for more recent periods, which gives evidence of major structural shifts in the relationship under investigation.

Query-guided End-to-End Person Search

Person search has recently gained attention as the novel task of finding a person, provided as a cropped sample, from a gallery of non-cropped images, whereby several other people are also visible. We believe that i. person detection and re-identification should be pursued in a joint optimization framework and that ii. the person search should leverage the query image extensively (e.g. emphasizing unique query patterns). However, so far, no prior art realizes this. We introduce a novel query-guided end-to-end person search network (QEEPS) to address both aspects. We leverage a most recent joint detector and re-identification work, OIM [37]. We extend this with i. a query-guided Siamese squeeze-and-excitation network (QSSE-Net) that uses global context from both the query and gallery images, ii. a query-guided region proposal network (QRPN) to produce query-relevant proposals, and iii. a query-guided similarity subnetwork (QSimNet), to learn a query-guided reidentification score. QEEPS is the first end-to-end query-guided detection and re-id network. On both the most recent CUHK-SYSU [37] and PRW [46] datasets, we outperform the previous state-of-the-art by a large margin.Comment: Accepted as poster in CVPR 201

Temperature Dependence of a Sub-wavelength Compact Graphene Plasmon-Slot Modulator

We investigate a plasmonic electro-optic modulator with an extinction ratio exceeding 1 dB/um by engineering the optical mode to be in-plane with the graphene layer, and show how lowering the operating temperature enables steeper switching. We show how cooling Graphene enables steeping thus improving dynamic energy consumption. Further, we show that multi-layer Graphene integrated with a plasmonic slot waveguide allows for in-plane electric field components, and 3-dB device lengths as short as several hundred nanometers only. Compact modulators approaching electronic length-scales pave a way for ultra-dense photonic integrated circuits with smallest footprint

Early retirement in West Germany: A hazard rate model in discrete time

In this paper, I describe a structural model of retirement behaviour, in which the multiplicityof alternative retirement ages, the possibility of unobserved heterogeneity and the absorbing state property of the retirement decision are accounted for. As it is based on a relatively simple utility maximization framework, the computational burden of the model's empirical implementation is only moderate although the sequential nature of the retirement decision is adequately captured by it. The model is estimated on an unbalanced panel of elderly West German males. The results reveal that a person's health status plays a key role in determining the timing of retirement, and that the relative intensity of the individual preference for leisure among public sector employees is, ceteris paribus, below average. Education, too, is shown to exert considerable influence on a person's tendency to retire early, but the relationship between an individual's educational status and the probability of early retirement appears to be rather complex

Sirenomelia, the Mermaid syndrome: case report and a brief review of literature

Sirenomelia, the Mermaid Syndrome is a rare and lethal congenital anomaly with an incidence of one in 60,000 to 70,000 pregnancies. Sirenomelia is characterized by complete fusion of the lower limbs, commonly associated with renal agenesis, absent external genitalia and other gastrointestinal defects. Another pathognomonic finding is the presence of single umbilical, persistent vitelline artery which is the chief distinguishing anatomic finding from Caudal Regression Syndrome. We report a case of termination of pregnancy done on the basis of ultrasound diagnosis of bilateral renal agenesis with no liquor volume. The foetus was identified to have characteristic features of Sirenomelia at the time of termination

Increased regeneration efficiency of _Brassica napus_ L. cultivars Star, Westar and Cyclone from hypocotyle and cotyledonary explants

The comparative organogenesis of _Brassica napus_ L cultivars Cyclone, Star and Westar was studied. The cotyledonary explants gave a higher response to all the combinations of 0.5 mg/L 2,4-D and BAP (0.5, 1.0,1.5 and 2.0 mg/L} used for optimizing the conditions for callus induction. The best mean weight and mean length of callus was obtained at 0.5 mg/L 2,4-D and 1.5mg/L BAP for Star cotyledonary explants. For the complete plant regeneration the new method of exposing the explants culture to Growth regulator free medium was performed. The method was applicable to both hypocotyl and cotyledonary explants. The Shoot Induction Frequency for hypocotyl (6-34%) in the three cultivars is higher than the cotyledonary explants (3-23%). The method is speedy and almost all of the shoots and some unshooted calli (78%) form roots on the same media without prior transfer to rooting medium

Coherent Multi-Sentence Video Description with Variable Level of Detail

Humans can easily describe what they see in a coherent way and at varying level of detail. However, existing approaches for automatic video description are mainly focused on single sentence generation and produce descriptions at a fixed level of detail. In this paper, we address both of these limitations: for a variable level of detail we produce coherent multi-sentence descriptions of complex videos. We follow a two-step approach where we first learn to predict a semantic representation (SR) from video and then generate natural language descriptions from the SR. To produce consistent multi-sentence descriptions, we model across-sentence consistency at the level of the SR by enforcing a consistent topic. We also contribute both to the visual recognition of objects proposing a hand-centric approach as well as to the robust generation of sentences using a word lattice. Human judges rate our multi-sentence descriptions as more readable, correct, and relevant than related work. To understand the difference between more detailed and shorter descriptions, we collect and analyze a video description corpus of three levels of detail.Comment: 10 page

Antidepressant Use and Depressive Symptoms in Intensive Care Unit Survivors

Nearly 30% of intensive care unit (ICU) survivors have depressive symptoms 2-12 months after hospital discharge. We examined the prevalence of depressive symptoms and risk factors for depressive symptoms in 204 patients at their initial evaluation in the Critical Care Recovery Center (CCRC), an ICU survivor clinic based at Eskenazi Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thirty-two percent (N = 65) of patients had depressive symptoms on initial CCRC visit. For patients who are not on an antidepressant at their initial CCRC visit (N = 135), younger age and lower education level were associated with a higher likelihood of having depressive symptoms. For patients on an antidepressant at their initial CCRC visit (N = 69), younger age and being African American race were associated with a higher likelihood of having depressive symptoms. Future studies will need to confirm these findings and examine new approaches to increase access to depression treatment and test new antidepressant regimens for post-ICU depression