Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Arrow–Calvo Price Staggering

We merge Arrow and Calvo pricing themes leading to a price-resetting signal dependent on inflation and competitiveness. This allows us to tractably analyse state-dependent issues and to develop a New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) expressed for the levels of variables and a specification which is not regime dependent. The standard NKPC arises as a special case. Using non-linear simulation and estimation techniques, we then demonstrate the importance of regime dependence in inflation dynamics and show that standard NKPCs are mis-specified even in low-inflation regimes. We further detect strong intrinsic persistence in historical US inflation.
The RBC View of Pakistan: A Declaration of Stylized Facts and Essential Models

In this paper, we establish the nature of short-run fluctuations of the Pakistani economy over the period of 1981-2010. There have been significant changes in the nature of the Pakistani economy over the last few decades. Therefore, we focus our detailed analysis on the last few decades where it seems more appropriate to investigate the nature and causes of business cycles in Pakistan. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of a typical RBC and an augmented RBC model with an exogenous FDI shock in explaining cyclical fluctuations experienced by the Pakistani economy. We find that a simple RBC model performs poorly in terms of matching relevant second- order moments of short run fluctuations as depicted by the data. However, augmented RBC model performs better compared to the simple RBC model.
Differential Capacity of Human Skin Dendritic Cells to Polarize CD4+T Cells into IL-17, IL-21 and IL-22 Producing Cells

Accumulating evidence suggests a contribution of T cell-derived IL-17, IL-21 and IL-22 cytokines in skin immune homeostasis as well as inflammatory disorders. Here, we analyzed whether the cytokine-producing T lymphocytes could be induced by the different subsets of human skin dendritic cells (DCs), i.e., epidermal Langerhans cells (LCs), dermal CD1c+CD14− and CD14+ DCs (DDCs). DCs were purified following a 2-day migration from separated epidermal and dermal sheets and co-cultured with allogeneic T cells before cytokine secretion was explored. Results showed that no skin DCs could induce substantial IL-17 production by naïve CD4+ or CD8+T lymphocytes whereas all of them could induce IL-17 production by memory T cells. In contrast, LCs and CD1c+CD14−DDCs were able to differentiate naïve CD4+T lymphocytes into IL-22 and IL-21-secreting cells, LCs being the most efficient in this process. Intracellular cytokine staining showed that the majority of IL-21 or IL-22 secreting CD4+T lymphocytes did not co-synthesized IFN-γ, IL-4 or IL-17. IL-21 and IL-22 production were dependent on the B7/CD28 co-stimulatory pathway and ICOS-L expression on skin LCs significantly reduced IL-21 level. Finally, we found that TGF-β strongly down-regulates both IL-21 and IL-22 secretion by allogeneic CD4+ T cells. These results add new knowledge on the functional specialization of human skin DCs and might suggest new targets in the treatment of inflammatory skin disorders.
Which Policy for Europe?: Power and Conflict inside the European Commission

1. Introduction 2. Position Formation inside the EU Commission: An Analytical Framework 3. Studying Internal Dynamics 4. Connecting Personal Characteristics and Organizational Structure: Commissioners, Directors-General and Services 5. The Intersection of Social and Common-market Policies 6. Research and Innovation Policy 7. Consumer Policy 8. Expert Groups in the Commission: Knowledge providers or political device/ 9. Insulated, Technocratic Decision-Making? Commission Position Formation and the Public Acceptability of Policy Options 10. Structural Biases? The Link Between Internal Coordination and the Dynamics of Position Formation 11. Many Factors in Position Formation, but Some Matter More Often Than Others: Evidence Across Cases 12. Shaping Policies for Europe: Internal Position Formation Between Problem-Solving, Turf Expansion and Political Ideology 13. Conclusion: Why We Should Care About Power and Conflict Inside the European Commission
Biometric and eye-tracking insights into the efficiency of information processing of television advertising during fast-forward viewing

Despite increased research focusing on the impact of digital video recorder (DVR) use, there continues to be a notable lack of data on viewers’ direct experience of time-shifted television ads. The current study was designed to increase understanding of information processing among DVR users by directly examining viewers’ biometric responses, eyegaze patterns and memory for ads viewed entirely in fast-forward (FF) mode compared with viewers who watched the same ads in real time. The results indicate that, compared with a control group of viewers of real-time advertising, viewers recalled the same ads viewed in FF at significantly higher rates than expected given the speed with which they were viewed. Notably, prior exposure to an ad increased the likelihood of that ad being recalled in FF mode. Eye-tracking data show that viewers in the DVR group spent significantly more time with their eyes on screen, more time looking at the centre of the screen, and also showed a substantial amount of visual processing activity during FF viewing. Finally, there were significantly higher levels of biometric response, an indicator of emotional processing, suggesting that viewers are in a ‘hyper-alert’ state during FF viewing. The biometric results, when combined with indications of visual processing and increased screen time, help explain the higher than expected next-day recall of ads in the DVR group.
Narrative Inspiration : Using Case Based Problem Solving to Support Emergent Story Generation

We consider a system that can generate stories as a creative system. One approach to building such a system is to simulate and narrate the behaviour of believable characters in a virtual story world. A risk of this approach is that no interesting story emerges. In order to make the behaviour of the characters more interesting from a story perspective, we propose a system that can use example story pieces, written from a plot perspective by a human author, to inspire decisions for characters in an emerging story. On a more philosophical note, we discuss the story generation process in the light of a characterization of creative systems and show that considering an automated story generator as a creative system can help to reveal implicit design choices.
Clostridial C3 Toxins Target Monocytes/Macrophages and Modulate Their Functions

The C3 enzymes from Clostridium (C.) botulinum (C3bot) and Clostridium limosum (C3lim) are single chain protein toxins of about 25 kDa that mono-ADP-ribosylate Rho-A, -B, and -C in the cytosol of mammalian cells. We discovered that both C3 proteins are selectively internalized into the cytosol of monocytes and macrophages by an endocytotic mechanism, comparable to bacterial AB-type toxins, while they are not efficiently taken up into the cytosol of other cell types including epithelial cells and fibroblasts. C3-treatment results in disturbed macrophage functions, such as migration and phagocytosis, suggesting a novel function of clostridial C3 toxins as virulence factors, which selectively interfere with these immune cells. Moreover, enzymatic inactive C3 protein serves as a transport system to selectively deliver pharmacologically active molecules into the cytosol of monocytes/macrophages without damaging these cells. This review addresses also the generation of C3-based molecular tools for experimental macrophage pharmacology and cell biology as well as the exploitation of C3 for development of novel therapeutic strategies against monocyte/macrophage-associated diseases.
Semistable Degeneration of Toric Varieties and Their Hypersurfaces

We provide a construction of examples of semistable degeneration via toric geometry. The applications include a higher dimensional generalization of classical degeneration of K3 surface into 4 rational components, an algebraic geometric version of decomposing K3 as the fiber sum of two E(1)'s as well as it's higher dimensional generalizations, and many other new examples.
Removal of White Mineral Trioxide Aggregate Cement: A Promising Approach

Removal of MTA from dentin by applying 37% hydrochloric acid (HCl) to reduce microhardness and push-out bond strength. Forty dentin slices were filled with WMTA and divided into two groups (n = 20). Ten slices remained untreated while others were exposed to either HCl or phosphate buffer saline (PBS) and all samples were subjected to pushout test. The mode of bond failures was determined by SEM analysis. Later, twenty glass tubes were filled with WMTA and divided into two groups (n = 10). One side of tube was exposed to HCl or PBS while the other side remained untreated and the microhardness was analyzed by testing machine. HCl showed significantly lower pushout strength and microhardness values (P = 0.0001), (P = 0.0001). HCl treated samples showed mixed bond failures dominantly, while PBS samples mostly showed adhesive failures. The results of this study can suggest the 37% HCl as an effective solution to aid the removal of MTA from the dentin surfaces.
A Miniaturized Unit Cell for Ultra-Broadband Active Millimeter-Wave Frequency Multiplication

A compact broadband unit cell for the design of broadband frequency multipliers is presented. Based on design methods from moderate frequencies, a novel integrated balanced field-effect transistor architecture is introduced, pushing ultra-broadband balanced frequency multiplication into the high millimeter-wave range. The realized microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs) using this topology provide second harmonic generation over several decades using only a single integrated transistor unit cell. The circuits are fabricated in a metamorphic HEMT technology for convenient integration into multifunctional MMICs and achieve relative bandwidths of 199% from 60 MHz to 80 GHz and 70.1% in D- and G-band (110-170 and 140-220 GHz).
Type IV Pilus Proteins Form an Integrated Structure Extending from the Cytoplasm to the Outer Membrane

The bacterial type IV pilus (T4P) is the strongest biological motor known to date as its retraction can generate forces well over 100 pN. Myxococcus xanthus, a δ-proteobacterium, provides a good model for T4P investigations because its social (S) gliding motility is powered by T4P. In this study, the interactions among M. xanthus T4P proteins were investigated using genetics and the yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) system. Our genetic analysis suggests that there is an integrated T4P structure that crosses the inner membrane (IM), periplasm and the outer membrane (OM). Moreover, this structure exists in the absence of the pilus filament. A systematic Y2H survey provided evidence for direct interactions among IM and OM proteins exposed to the periplasm. For example, the IM lipoprotein PilP interacted with its cognate OM protein PilQ. In addition, interactions among T4P proteins from the thermophile Thermus thermophilus were investigated by Y2H. The results indicated similar protein-protein interactions in the T4P system of this non-proteobacterium despite significant sequence divergence between T4P proteins in T. thermophilus and M. xanthus. The observations here support the model of an integrated T4P structure in the absence of a pilus in diverse bacterial species.
Financial Intermediation and Growth: Chinese Style

The author analyzes the relationship between growth and financial intermediation at the sub-national level within China. Does the quality of the banking sector in a province affect its rate of growth? Do state and non-state banking sectors perform differently? Does the structure of the local banking sector affect the rate of provincial economic growth? To answer these questions, the author first uses evidence on the fragmentation of regional capital markets to justify the existence of local credit channels. Second, using a dataset of 26 provinces between 1990 and 1999, she defines and introduces indicators of local banking development into the traditional growth regression framework using the GMM-system estimator. The results suggest that credit extended by the banking sector at the state level has a negative impact on provincial economic growth. This negative effect appears to be attributable to the burden of supporting the state-owned corporate sector rather than to the poor performance of state-owned banks. Moreover, provinces with more diversified banking sectors appear to grow faster.
Perirhinal Cortex Supports Delay Fear Conditioning to Rat Ultrasonic Social Signals

Auditory information can reach the lateral nucleus of the amygdala (LA) through a monosynaptic thalamic projection or a polysynaptic cortical route. The polymodal input from the perirhinal cortex (PR) is a major informational gateway to the LA and nearby structures. Pretraining PR lesions impair fear conditioning to a context, but there have been no reports that they cause deficits in delay conditioning to an auditory cue. The direct subcortical projection to the LA seems sufficient to support delay conditioning to a tone conditional stimulus (CS). We examined the effect of PR lesions on delay conditioning to two different tone conditional stimuli (4 and 22 kHz tones; both 10 sec duration) and two different rat ultrasonic vocalization (USV) conditional stimuli (10 sec of “22 kHz USVs”). The two USV conditional stimuli were multi-call segments that were recorded (digitized at 100 kHz) from two different rats. One USV CS was a continuous sequence of eight calls, and the other was a portion of a continuous sequence of six calls. PR lesions significantly impaired conditioning to both USV conditional stimuli and to the training context but had no significant effect on conditioning to either tone CS. The role of PR in fear conditioning appears not to be determined by whether the conditional stimuli serve as contexts or cues, but instead by the nature or complexity of the stimuli or stimulus configurations. These cue-specific effects of PR lesions are suggested to reflect differences in the stimulus features that are encoded in the two CS pathways to the LA.
Grey selves: Identity work of academics caught between the ‘white’ traditional higher education values and the ‘black’ corporatization forces

The purpose of the research was to enrich the understanding of the process of corporatization of higher education and to demonstrate the importance of studying identity work. We conducted an inductive case study research basing our methods and methodology on hermeneutics and an interpretive paradigm. We developed our argumentation on the basis of interpretive and critical theory regarding identity, identity work, insecurity and corporatization of higher education. Our main research question is: "How do academics work on their identities in the context of corporatization processes in higher education? " The case study was focused on the specific environment of academic staff in LUSEM in the context of local and global market-oriented processes influencing academia. We have identified distinct clashes between different groups of identity sources. Their interaction creates different levels of identity work intensity for academic in LUSEM. They experience relatively low level of material insecurity and higher one of symbolic insecurity. The strongest identity work trigger is the instrumentalist view on higher education.
Deficient orthographic and phonological representations in children with dyslexia revealed by brain activation patterns.

BACKGROUND The current study examined the neuro-cognitive network of visual word rhyming judgment in 14 children with dyslexia and 14 age-matched control children (8- to 14-year-olds) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS In order to manipulate the difficulty of mapping orthography to phonology, we used conflicting and non-conflicting trials. The words in conflicting trials either had similar orthography but different phonology (e.g., pint-mint) or similar phonology but different orthography (e.g., jazz-has). The words in non-conflicting trials had similar orthography and phonology (e.g., gate-hate) or different orthography and phonology (e.g., press-list). RESULTS There were no differences in brain activation between the controls and children with dyslexia in the easier non-conflicting trials. However, the children with dyslexia showed less activation than the controls in left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45/44/47/9), left inferior parietal lobule (BA 40), left inferior temporal gyrus/fusiform gyrus (BA 20/37) and left middle temporal gyrus (BA 21) for the more difficult conflicting trials. For the direct comparison of conflicting minus non-conflicting trials, controls showed greater activation than children with dyslexia in left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 9/45/46) and medial frontal gyrus (BA 8). Children with dyslexia did not show greater activation than controls for any comparison. CONCLUSIONS Reduced activation in these regions suggests that children with dyslexia have deficient orthographic representations in ventral temporal cortex as well as deficits in mapping between orthographic and phonological representations in inferior parietal cortex. The greater activation for the controls in inferior frontal gyrus could reflect more effective top-down modulation of posterior representations.
Welfare and the Labor Market in Poland: Social Policy during Economic Transition

Based on empirical evidence, this report assesses changes in social welfare and policy in Poland during the economic transition. The report reviews changes in three areas of social welfare: state provision of cash benefits and social services (Chapter 1); changes in the labor market (Chapter 2); and income distribution (Chapter 3). Chapter 1 addresses the question of whether the transition is associated with the withering away of the welfare state built under the communist regime, as some observers claim. Contrary to prior expectations, social expenditures as a share of Gross Domestic Products have grown during the transition. In the wake of economic liberalization, employment and wages began to be determined by the interplay of supply and demand. This had two key welfare consequences: the emergence of unemployment and the widening of earnings differentials. Chapter 2 examines these changes in employment prospects and in the wage structure. Specifically it concentrates on the labor market prospects of different worker groups. The transition brought about a significant increase in the premium on education. Highly skilled workers have a strong incentive to seek private sector jobs. Chapter 3 analyzes distributional consequences of the transition and tests the validity of the claims that income inequalities have polarized the Polish society. These fears are not supported by the evidence since Poland remains relatively egalitarian, with a large middle class.
Penalty/Barrier Multiplier Methods for Convex Programming Problems

We study a class of methods for solving convex programs, which are based on nonquadratic augmented Lagrangians for which the penalty parameters are functions of the multipliers. This gives rise to Lagrangians which are nonlinear in the multipliers. Each augmented Lagrangian is specified by a choice of a penalty function $\varphi$ and a penalty-updating function $\pi$. The requirements on $\varphi$ are mild and allow for the inclusion of most of the previously suggested augmented Lagrangians. More importantly, a new type of penalty/barrier function (having a logarithmic branch glued to a quadratic branch) is introduced and used to construct an efficient algorithm. Convergence of the algorithms is proved for the case of $\pi$ being a sublinear function of the dual multipliers. The algorithms are tested on large-scale quadratically constrained problems arising in structural optimization.
Nominal Contracting and Price Flexibility in Product Markets

The search for microeconomic foundations of non-Walrasian outcomes in labor and product markets has spawned many studies of contracting. This paper emphasizes the role of contracts for market equilibrium -- for many raw materials and basic industrial commodities -- in which long-term contractual arrangements and spot markets coexist. Our principal goals are two -- (i) to explain the existence of contracts and the equilibrium fraction of trades carried out under contract, and (ii) to consider the impact of demand and supply shocks on spot prices when market trades also take place through long-term contracts. We find that the relative importance of contracting depends on, inter alia, the variance of the spot price and the sources of underlying fluctuations. Consistent with the findings of previous macroeconomic studies, we find that contracting and price rigidity are more likely the more important demand shocks are relative to supply shocks. We adapt our static model of contract price and quantity determination to discuss the adjustment of contract prices. Finally, we discuss three important applications of our multiple-price modeling structure -- to (i) analyses of the effects of changes in vertical market structure on market equilibrium in commodity markets (with specific reference to petroleum and copper), (ii) models of the optimal degree of contract indexation,and (iii) aggregate studies of "sticky prices" in macroeconomics.
Open Source : From Mythos to Meaning

Free open source software (FOSS) projects expose rich development, evolutionary, and collaborative data from which researchers have formed theories and conclusions about the FOSS development ecosystem. However, little work has been done to determine whether FOSS projects are analogous to proprietary development efforts. We propose several axes along which taxonomies of FOSS and proprietary projects may be created and compared, and preview several future studies that will begin to populate these taxonomies. 1 What is “Open Source”? Open Source proponents have long touted the advantages, be they financial, social, ethical, or moral, of developing software using an “open source” paradigm. However, even among some of the earliest players in the “open source” space, there is little agreement about its exact definition. Some claim that open source is a convenient (and possibly more efficient) way for developers to collaborate on major software projects. Linus Torvalds: Me, I just don’t care about proprietary software. It’s not “evil” or “immoral,” it just doesn’t matter. I think that Open Source can do better. it’s just a superior way of working together and generating
The Dark Side of the Force: Economic Foundations of Conflict Theory

Introduction 1. The dark side of the force Part I. Causes, Consequences and Conduct of Conflict: 2. The bioeconomic causes of war 3. The paradox of power 4. Do the rich get richer and the poor poorer? Experimental tests of a model of power 5. Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: ration vs. difference models of relative success 6. Anarchy and its breakdown 7. Truth, effort, and the legal battle 8. Are equilibrium strategies unaffected by incentives? Part II. Evolutionary Approaches to Conflict and its Resolution: 9. Extract from evolutionary models in economics and law: cooperation versus conflict strategies 10. On the emotions as guarantors of threats and promises 11. What strategies can support the evolutionary emergence of cooperation? 12. Selection, mutation, and the preservation of diversity in evolutionary games 13. There are many evolutionary pathways to cooperation 14. The expanding domain of economics.