IDS Transposer: A Users Guide

The Intermediate Data Structure (IDS) encourages sharing historical life course data by storing data in a common format. To encompass the complexity of life histories, IDS relies on data structures that are unfamiliar to most social scientists. This article examines four features of IDS that make it flexible and expandable: the Entity-Attribute-Value model, the relational database model, embedded metadata, and the Chronicle file. I also consider IDS from the perspective of current discussions about sharing data across scientific domains. We can find parallels to IDS in other fields that may lead to future innovations.

Konzept einer intermediaren Datenstruktur (IDS) zur Integration national unterschiedlicher Datenbanken«. In recent years, studies of historical populations have shifted from tracing large-scale processes to analyzing longi- tudinal micro data in the form of 'life histories'. This approach expands the scope of social history by integrating data on a range of life course events. The complexity of life-course analysis, however, has limited most researchers to working with one specific database. We discuss methodological problems raised by longitudinal historical data and the challenge of converting life histo- ries into rectangular datasets compatible with statistical analysis systems. The logical next step is comparing life courses across local and national databases, and we propose a strategy for sharing historical longitudinal data based on an intermediate data structure (IDS) that can be adopted by all databases. We de- scribe the benefits of the IDS approach and activities that will advance the goals of simplifying and promoting research with longitudinal historical data.

Intermediate data structures are a common cause of inefficiency in functional programming. Fusion attempts to eliminate intermediate data structures by combining adjacent data traversals into one; existing fusion techniques, however, are based on predefined rewrite rules and hence are limited in expressiveness. In this work we explore a different approach to eliminating intermediate data structures, based on inductive program synthesis. We dub this approach superfusion (by analogy with superoptimization , which uses inductive synthesis for program optimization). Starting from a reference program annotated with data structures to be eliminated, superfusion first generates a sketch where program fragments operating on those data structures are replaced with holes; it then fills the holes with constant-time expressions such that the resulting program is equivalent to the reference. The main technical challenge here is scalability because optimized programs are often complex, making the search space intractably large for naive enumeration. To address this challenge, our key insight is to first synthesize a ghost function that describes the relationship between the original intermediate data structure and its compressed version; this function, although not used in the final program, serves to decompose the joint sketch filling problem into independent simpler problems for each hole. We implement superfusion in a tool called SuFu and evaluate it on a dataset of 290 tasks collected from prior work on deductive fusion and program restructuring. The results show that SuFu solves 264 out of 290 tasks, exceeding the capabilities of rewriting-based fusion systems and achieving comparable performance with specialized approaches to program restructuring on their respective domains.

Unfolds generate data structures, and folds consume them. A hylomorphism is a fold after an unfold, generating then consuming a virtual data structure. A metamorphism is the opposite composition, an unfold after a fold; typically, it will convert from one data representation to another. In general, metamorphisms are less interesting than hylomorphisms: there is no automatic fusion to deforest the intermediate virtual data structure. However, under certain conditions fusion is possible: some of the work of the unfold can be done before all of the work of the fold is complete. This permits streaming metamorphisms, and among other things allows conversion of infinite data representations. We present a theory of metamorphisms and outline some examples.

Mixed community policies are frequently justified by a belief in neighbourhood effects. As such they are essentially faith-based since there is scant evidence that increasing socio-economic diversity significantly improves the life chances of poorer residents. A key question that has to be addressed is whether living in a poor neighbourhood is a separate, independent cause of poverty? The chapter reviews the evidence from a wide range of neighbourhood effects studies designed to overcome problems with selection bias: studies based on quasi-experimental data and longitudinal individual level data from a variety of countries. The evidence supporting the significance and even the existence of neighbourhood effects is remarkably thin when subjected to rigorous evaluation. Based on this review it is argued that policies for mixed neighbourhoods treat the symptoms rather than the causes of poverty and that efforts to improve the lives of the poor would be more effectively directed towards people themselves rather than moving people around to mix neighbourhoods. Moreover, it was found that there are real welfare and productivity benefits from living in specialised neighbourhoods. Mixed neighbourhood policies risk of destroying these and the possible losses must be balanced against any potential benefits of reduced negative ‘neighbourhood effects’.

This study focuses on the effects of children on the labour supply of married and lone mothers in the USA and Germany using individual-level longitudinal data and event-history analysis. Employment exits and (re-)entries are examined in various stages of the family life cycle in order to assess the impact of children of various ages on their mothers' employment patterns. Analyses based on the National Survey of Families and Households (USA) and the Socioeconomic Panel (Germany) show that lone mothers have in general equal or lower rates of work exits than married mothers, and equal or higher rates of employment (re-)entries when other factors are controlled. This high degree of work activity among lone mothers is often overlooked in debates that focus on the poverty and welfare dependency of lone-mother households. The differences between lone and married mothers are in general considerably greater in Germany than in the USA. Lone mothers in Germany rely more on full-time employment than married women, for whom part-time work is an important form of re-employment after employment interruptions. Also, in the USA part-time employment is associated only with married women as a way to reconcile employment and children. Finally, the timing of childbearing emerges as an important determinant of how women's careers evolve over the life course.

BackgroundInternational comparisons of disease prevalence have been useful in understanding what proportion of disease might be preventable and in informing potential policy interventions in different cultural and economic contexts. Using newly available, harmonized data from 20 countries, we compare disability and morbidity of older adults between the ages of 55 and 74.MethodsThe Gateway to Global Aging Data, a data and information portal, provides access to easy-to-use individual-level longitudinal data from 10 surveys covering over 30 countries. Exploiting harmonized measures available from the Gateway, we descriptively examine how disability and morbidity differ across countries.ResultsSignificant cross-country differences are observed for several health indicators. Comparing countries with the highest and lowest prevalence rates, we observe that hypertension rates vary twofold and stroke rates vary threefold, while disability and arthritis rates vary more than fivefold. Among women, higher gross domestic product and life expectancy are related to lower diabetes, heart disease, and better functioning. Among men, national indicators of economic conditions are not significantly associated with reported disease prevalence.ConclusionsWe document substantial heterogeneity in disability and morbidity across countries, separately for men and women and after controlling for population age composition and education. Rich data from various surveys across the world offers remarkable opportunities for cross-country analyses, calling for further investigation of what drives observed differences. The Gateway to Global Aging Data provides easy-to-use harmonized data files and tools to facilitate this type of research.

: The Mission Execution Modeling Team of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has a project to determine the accuracy and value added of the weather models and decision support tools under development. To accomplish this, the team has developed the capability to produce model validation statistics using National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Model Evaluation Tools (MET) software. The MET Point-Stat tool compares weather model output from the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model to point weather observations collected from the Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS) and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) PrepBUFR data source. The Point-Stat tool calculates error statistics on the performance of WRF forecasts. The MET Stat-Analysis tool aggregates and summarizes these statistics according to user determined criteria. The data from these summaries are extracted and imported into spreadsheets where they can be visualized in tables and graphs for further analysis. Execution of the data collection programs, MET software and the extraction programs requires the user to run approximately 100 scripts which collect, reformat, organize, execute and extract the results on local workstations and ARL High Performance Computers. To organize and track the process of running these scripts, this User's Guide was developed from internal procedures and checklists.

Benefit in the wake of disaster: Long-run effects of earthquakes on welfare in rural Indonesia

There is much debate about whether the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill -the greatest expansion of Medicare benefits since its creation in 1965 -will improve the health of elderly Americans, and how much it will cost. We model how insurance affects medical care utilization, and subsequently, health outcomes over time in a dynamic model with correlated errors. Longitudinal individual-level data from the 1992-1998 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey provide estimates of these effects.

This article investigates the association between, participation in, and exposure to voluntary organisations and marital fertility during the European fertility transition from 1880 to 1949. This is achieved using individual-level longitudinal demographic data from northern Sweden linked with individual-level information on voluntary organisation membership and contextual level information on organisation activity. How living near an organisation influenced fertility is measured using mixed effect Cox regressions. The association to participation for both men and women is tested by matching members to a control group through propensity score matching before estimating differences in risks of another birth using Cox regressions. The results show that being exposed to an organisation was related to lower fertility. Joining a union or a temperance organisation showed even stronger negative associations, but only for male members, while female members showed no significant difference in fertility. The results suggest that reproductive decisions were not simple responses by the individual couple to structural changes but were also shaped within the social networks of which they were a part.

BackgroundPrevious research from the USA has shown that low health literacy is associated with higher hospitalization rates and higher rates of emergency service use. However, studies in a European context using more comprehensive health literacy definitions are lacking. The aim was to study the impact of low health literacy on healthcare utilization in a Danish context.MethodsIn this prospective cohort study, baseline survey data from 2013 were derived from a large Danish health and morbidity survey and merged with individual-level longitudinal register data for a 4-year follow-up period. The study included people in the general population (n = 29 473) and subgroups of people with four different chronic conditions: cardiovascular disease (CVD) (n = 2389), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (n = 1214), diabetes (n = 1685) and mental disorders (n = 1577).ResultsIn the general population, low health literacy predicted slightly more visits to the general practitioner and admissions to hospital and longer hospitalization periods at 4 years of follow-up, whereas low health literacy did not predict planned outpatient visits or emergency room visits. In people with CVD, low health literacy predicted more days with emergency room visits. In people with mental disorders, difficulties in actively engaging with healthcare providers were associated with a higher number of hospital admission days. No significant association between health literacy and healthcare utilization was found for diabetes or COPD.ConclusionsEven though Denmark has a universal healthcare system the level of health literacy affects healthcare use in the general population and in people with CVD and mental disorders.

Service-oriented architecture of adaptive, intelligent data acquisition and processing systems for long-pulse fusion experiments

The 24-hr cycle of activity and sleep provides perhaps the most familiar example of circadian rhythms. In mammals, circadian activity rhythms are generated by a master biological clock located in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN). This clock is synchronized (entrained) to the external light environment via light input from retinal photoreceptors. However, sleep is not a simple circadian output and also is regulated by a homeostatic process whereby extended wakefulness increases the need for subsequent sleep. As such, the amount and distribution of sleep depends upon the interaction between both circadian and homeostatic processes. Moreover, the study of circadian activity and sleep is not confined only to these specialized fields. Sleep and circadian rhythm disruption is common in many conditions, ranging from neurological and metabolic disorders to aging. Such disruption is associated with a range of negative consequences including cognitive impairment and mood disorders, as well as immune and metabolic dysfunction. As circadian activity and sleep are hallmarks of normal healthy physiology, they also provide valuable welfare indicators. However, traditional methods for the monitoring of circadian rhythms and sleep in mice can require separate specialized resources as well as significant expertise. Here, we outline a low-cost, non-invasive, and open-source method for the simultaneous assessment of circadian activity and sleep in mice. This protocol describes both the assembly of the hardware used and the capture and analysis of data without the need for expertise in electronics or data processing. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC. Basic Protocol: Assembly of a PIR system for basic activity and sleep recordings Alternate Protocol: Data collection using Raspberry Pi Support Protocol: Circadian analysis using PIR sensors.

Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) obsolescence drives a requirement for rehosting Test Program Sets (TPSs). However, due to the many variations of programming languages, in most cases, the target language of the new ATE platform differs from the legacy language. This paper discusses a flexible, modular software approach for TPS rehost efforts. The new approach can be used to convert code while also allowing for the automated creation of additional output products (e.g., Test Requirements Document (TRD), Automatic Test Markup Language (ATML) files, fault universe, and ATE instrument requirements). Furthermore, the modular design and nonspecific, intermediate data structure significantly improves code reusability for rehosting between different ATE platforms. Additionally, as a case study, this paper discusses the benefits achieved using this approach.