Search

The thyroid gland is the largest endocrine organ in the body, and when it behaves abnormally, patient health may suffer. The development of thyroid diagnostic techniques is reviewed considering direct and indirect techniques. Combining spectroscopic approaches with machine deep learning represents a promising diagnostic tool due to its low cost, speed, and good precision. The machine deep learning models for spectral profiling and the evaluation methods are used to test the performance on the bases of precision, sensitivity, specificity, subject operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and F1-score. The analysis of the spectra with machine deep learning models has significant potential for disease diagnosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using microsimulations this paper analyzes the poverty and tax implications of replacing current transfers and subsidies by a budget-neutral (no change in the fiscal deficit) universal basic income program (UBI) in Brazil, Chile, India, Russia, and South Africa. We consider three UBI transfers with increasing levels of generosity and identify scenarios in which the poor are no worse off than in the baseline scenario of existing social transfers. We find that for poverty levels not to increase under a UBI reform, the level of spending must increase substantially with respect to the baseline. Accordingly, the required increase in tax burdens is high throughout. We find that the increase in the average tax rate that would be consistent with not hurting the poor is almost universally above 30%, limiting the feasibility of a UBI reform due to political resistance and efficiency costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coal industry is dominated by the largest mines, with 1% of coal mines in the U.S. being responsible for 65% of the coal cumulatively produced. We show that this "heavy tail" can be well approximated by a power law, where mine-level cumulative production is inversely proportionate to distributional rank. Maximum likelihood and regression-based procedures estimate the counter-cumulative power-law parameter to be less than one, indicating there is no well-defined mean or variance for cumulative production. Goodness of fit tests indicate the power-law is a better fit to the data than other competing distributions, including the lognormal. • Mine-level cumulative coal production is power-law distributed. • Distribution indicates there is no well-defined mean or variance. • Distribution shows how heavily concentrated coal production is in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]