Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exercise pressor reflex in decerebrate and anesthetized rats.

I investigated whether muscular contraction evokes cardiorespiratory increases (exercise pressor reflex) in alpha-chloralose- and chloral hydrate-anesthetized and precollicular, midcollicular, and postcollicular decerebrated rats. Mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), and minute ventilation (Ve) were recorded before and during 1-min sciatic nerve stimulation, which induced static contraction of the triceps surae muscles, and during 1-min stretch of the calcaneal tendon, which selectively stimulated mechanosensitive receptors in the muscles. Anesthetized rats showed various patterns of MAP response to both stimuli, i.e., biphasic, depressor, pressor, and no response. Sciatic nerve stimulation to muscle in precollicular decerebrated rats always evoked spontaneous running, so the exercise pressor reflex was not determined from these preparations. None of the postcollicular decerebrated rats showed a MAP response or spontaneous running. Midcollicular decerebrated rats consistently showed biphasic blood pressure response to both stimulations. The increases in MAP, HR, and Ve were related to the tension developed. The static contractions in midcollicular decerebrated rats (381 +/- 65 g developed tension) significantly increased MAP, HR, and Ve from 103 +/- 12 to 119 +/- 24 mmHg, from 386 +/- 30 to 406 +/- 83 beats/min, and from 122 +/- 7 to 133 +/- 25 ml/min, respectively. After paralysis, sciatic nerve stimulation had no effect on MAP, HR, or Ve. These results indicate that the midcollicular decerebrated rat can be a model for the study of the exercise pressor reflex.
Unusual and exigent: my first year at the Fed: a speech at the Economics Club of Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia, February 18, 2010

Thank you so much for being here. It’s great to be home with so many friends, former colleagues, and former customers, and all of you who make Hampton Roads such a great place to live and do business. I am truly honored to receive the Economic Impact award from the Economics Club of Hampton Roads, joining such company as Paul Sarbanes, former senator from Maryland and coauthor of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. By honoring me, you recognize the extraordinary work of all the talented, knowledgeable, and dedicated men and women of the Federal Reserve System. So I would like to take this opportunity to express my admiration for the Fed staff and my colleagues on the Board of Governors, especially Chairman Ben Bernanke. I witnessed firsthand the leadership, the concern for the U.S. economy, and the political courage the chairman displayed as he led us through this tumultuous time. I wholeheartedly believe that without the actions taken by the Federal Reserve to fight the financial crisis, our financial system would have frozen and the outcome for the economy would have been unthinkable. It is hard to believe that it has only been 18 months since I left here. So I thought I would tell you a little about what I have been doing.
How Does Angel Investor–Entrepreneur Conflict Affect Venture Innovation? It Depends

This study examines how angel investor–entrepreneur task conflicts are related to portfolio company innovativeness and how this relationship is moderated by the level of agreement on priorities, diversity of entrepreneurial experience, and the level of communication. Using survey data gathered from 54 teams of angels and entrepreneurs in Belgium and the United States, we show that the negative relationship between task conflict and innovativeness is more severe when the teams have lower levels of agreement on priorities, when there is less diversity of experience in the team, and when the teams communicate more frequently.
An Overview of the New Emerging Balance of Forces- 'the BRICS, G 20 and G 7' Response to the Global Financial Crisis

The USA and the EU economies have just been through a severe recession marked by financial turmoil, large-scale destruction of wealth, and declines in industrial production and global trade. As the result of reduction in the demand of products in the global market, continued falling prices due to lack of demand of their products. The USA economy is not competitive now. The current international financial crisis was an explosion that was the ultimate result of the accumulation of a number of unbalanced, inconsistent and unsustainable factors in the world economy. It is a reflection of the limitations of the liberal capitalist development concept of Western countries. It also shows the dangers of blindly copying the Western development model. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the G 20 replacing the G- 7 in the wake of the economic crisis, as the premier global forum to deal with the crisis, reflected a relative decline in the power of the US and other advanced capitalist countries. The BRICS can represent the interests of all the developing countries. The BRICS countries are not only the emerging largest economies but its growing strong economic and political relationship with the African, Latin American and Asian countries; it may change in the international economic order through using common currency in trade, sharing their own science and technology to improve and transform in agriculture, energy, and industrial sectors, and establishing a new military block so they can provide security from the imperialist aggression. Of course, China would be as backbone of the BRICS.
Lessons learned from performance management systems implementations

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the main problems that can be encountered during the implementation and use of a performance management system (PMS). Design/methodology/approach - Problems encountered during the implementation and use of a PMS were collected from the literature and put into a survey which was sent to 31 experts in performance management (PM). These experts gave their opinion on the frequency, impact and solvability of the listed problems as they encountered these in practice. Findings - The study shows that the failure rate of PM implementations has decreased in the past decade from 70 to 56 percent, and that the most severe problems organizations encounter are: lack of top management commitment; not having a PM culture; PM getting a low priority or its use being abandoned after a change of management; management putting low priority on the implementation; and people not seeing (enough) benefit from PM. Research limitations/implications - The main limitation is that the number of experts could be higher in order to get an even broader view on the main problems. Practical implications - The practical implication of the study is that management can now better prepare itself for the issues to be expected while introducing PMSs in the organization. Originality/value - The need for an efficient and effective PMSs has increased over the last decade and the successful implementation and use of these systems has become of paramount importance to organizations. Unfortunately, until now only scattered information was available in the literature about the problems that can be expected during the implementation and use processes. Even the failure rate, which is often mentioned in the literature has never been substantiated. This paper gives, for the first time, a systematic overview of the main problems to be expected, and a more accurate failure rate of PMSs.
Handbook of Econometrics

This handbook aims to serve as a source reference and teaching supplement for the field of econometrics the branch of economics concerned with the empirical estimation of economic relationships. It concentrates on statistical problems and economic interpretation issues associated with the modeling and estimation of economic behavioral relationships from already assembled and often badly collected data. The organization of the handbook follows in relatively systematic fashion the way an econometric study would proceed starting from basic mathematical and statistical methods and econometric models proceeding to estimation and computation through testing and ultimately to applications and uses. Part 1 summarizes some basic tools used repeatedly in econometrics including linear algebra matrix methods and statistical theory. Part 2 deals with econometric models their relationship to economic models their identification and the question of model choice and specification analysis. Part 3 takes up more advanced topics in estimation and computation theory such as non-linear regression methods biased estimation and computational algorithms in econometrics. This part also includes a series of chapters on simultaneous equations models their specification and estimation distribution theory for such models and their Bayesian analysis. Part 4 considers testing of econometric estimators including Wald likelihood ratio and LaGrange multiplier tests; multiple testing hypothesis; distribution theory for econometric estimators; and Monte Carlo experimentation in econometrics. Part 5 treats various topics in time series analysis. Parts 6 and 7 present discussions of various special topics in econometrics including latent variable limited dependent variable and discrete choice models; functional forms in econometric model building; economic data issues including longitudinal data issues; and disequilibrium self selection and switching models. Finally part 8 covers selected applications and uses of econometrics.
Born with a Silver Spoon: Inequality in Educational Achievement Across the World

This paper assesses inequality of opportunity in educational achievement using the Human Opportunity Index methodology on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment. The findings suggest that there are large inequalities in learning outcomes as measured by demonstrated proficiency in Programme for International Student Assessment test scores in math, reading, and science. Differences in wealth, parental education, and area of residence explain a bulk of this inequality in most of the countries in the sample. Consistent with what has been documented previously in the literature, the paper also finds a strong and stable correlation between inequality of opportunity and public spending on school education. An exploration of the changes in inequality of opportunity between the 2009 and 2012 rounds of the Programme for International Student Assessment, using parametric and nonparametric techniques, suggests that there has been little progress.
Performance Evaluation of Public Service Institutions (CQS) Framework

The purpose of this manuscript is to propose three- dimensional logical research framework for analyzing shared solid waste management services performance i.e., cost, quality and social welfare (CQS) in public service institutions (PSIs) using Kampala Capital City Authority for explanatory purposes. The logical research framework encompasses almost all components involved in shared services performance like input, outputs and outcomes. Acceptable production in any PSIs should demonstrate enhancement to achieve all benchmarks. The logical framework is beneficial to practitioners and academicians for its contribution to guide bureaucrats on the need for shared services policy and its implications to government correctness in solving societal challenges through scientific measurement and hypothesizing of performance.
The Fluctuation Scale of the Intonation of Statement and Declarative Question in English

Based on the concept of intonation pattern and the method of fluctuation scale, this paper qualitatively and quantitatively conducts a preliminary research focused on the pitch representations of the sentence and tone group ranges of statement and declarative question in English and makes a comparatively detailed study on the pitch movements between the two intonation moods. The findings point out method of fluctuation scale are effective means to analyze the pitch movement of English intonation and to find the universality of the intonation moods.
The Role of Body Postures in the Recognition of Emotions in Contextually Rich Scenarios

In this article the role of different categories of postures in the detection, recognition, and interpretation of emotion in contextually rich scenarios, including ironic items, is investigated. Animated scenarios are designed with 3D virtual agents in order to test 3 conditions: In the “still” condition, the narrative content was accompanied by emotional facial expressions without any body movements; in the “idle” condition, emotionally neutral body movements were introduced; and in the “congruent” condition, emotional body postures congruent with the character's facial expressions were displayed. Those conditions were examined by 27 subjects, and their impact on the viewers’ attentional and emotional processes was assessed. The results highlight the importance of the contextual information to emotion recognition and irony interpretation. It is also shown that both idle and emotional postures improve the detection of emotional expressions. Moreover, emotional postures increase the perceived intensity of emotions and the realism of the animations.
Synaptic modulation of N‐methyl‐D‐asparatate receptor mediated responses in hippocampus

Low magnesium medium and the N‐methyl‐D‐aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist D‐2‐amino‐5‐phosphonopentanoate (D‐AP5) were used to analyze the effect of several manipulations on the component of excitatory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs) mediateed by activation of NDMA receptors in area CA1 of hippocampal slices. The D‐AP5 sensitive component of synaptic response was characterized by a marked sensitivity to changes in extracellular magnesium and calcium concentrations. In both cases the changes in D‐AP5 sensitive responses were considerably larger than those in non‐NMDA‐dependent potentials. Similarly, frequency facilitation, which is due to a transient increase in release, was accompanied by a greater enhancement of NMDA than non‐NMDA receptor‐mediated components. The degree of paired‐pulse facilitation observed with D‐AP5 sensitive responses was magnesium‐dependent between, concentrations of 0.05 and 0.5 mM, an effect not seen with control potentials. Intracellular injections of hyperpolarizing current pulses differentially affected NMDA and non‐NMDA receptor‐mediated components. Taken together, these results indicate that changes in the amount of transmitter release may affect to agreater degree NMDA than non‐NMDA receptor‐mediated components of synaptic responses, probably because of the voltage‐sensitive blockade by magnesium of the NMDA receptors. In contrast, induction of long‐term potentiation (LTP) by high frequency stimulation produced a larger increase in non‐NMDA as opposed to NMDA receptor‐dependent responses, a result that does not support the idea that an increases in transmitter release is responsible for LTP.
The Information Content in Implied Idiosyncratic Volatility and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns: Evidence from the Option Markets

Current literature is inconclusive as to whether idiosyncratic risk influences future stock returns and the direction of the impact. Prior studies are based on historical realized volatility. Implied volatilities from option prices represent the market's assessment of future risk and are likely a superior measure to historical realized volatility. We use implied idiosyncratic volatilities on firms with traded options to examine the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and future returns. We find a strong positive link between implied idiosyncratic risk and future returns. After considering the impact of implied idiosyncratic volatility, historical realized idiosyncratic volatility is unimportant. This performance is strongly tied to small size and high book-to-market equity firms.
The aftermath of the financial crisis

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the international community efforts through the OECD and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in confronting tax evasion and money laundering (ML). Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on the confrontation of OECD's and FAFT's results with data produced by the World Bank and Transparency International.Findings – The G20 has speeded up the fight against tax evasion. There is no dilemma between confronting tax evasion or organized crime/terrorist ML but a potential crowding out effect and a risk of facade compliance. Corruption and poor governance have regional aspects but generate money for global laundering. The OECD is impressive in countering tax evasion. Its listing is not universal and gives satisfaction to jurisdictions having bad corruption/governance indicators. The FATF's record is striking but governance remains an issue as well as fair cooperation, and the ML and terrorist financing (TF) threat is evolving. New risks include tax eva.
Apolipoprotein E Isoforms Increase Intracellular Ca2+ Differentially Through a ω‐Agatoxin IVa‐Sensitive Ca2+‐Channel

Apolipoprotein E (apoE) is the major apolipoprotein in the brain and is known for its important role in plasticity and neurodegeneration. We show that apoE dose‐dependently increases intracellular free Ca2+ in rat hippocampal astrocytes and neurons. This effect varies with isoforms in the order E4>E3>E2. It is insensitive to blockade of action potentials by tetrodotoxin or inhibition of binding of apoE by heparinase, by the LRP ligand lactoferrin and by low density lipoprotein. ApoE evoked Ca2+‐increases are blocked in zero [Ca]o and by the Ca‐channel antagonists nickel and ω‐Agatoxin‐IVa but not by nifedipine and ω‐Conotoxin‐GVIa, demonstrating an isoform‐specific activation of P/Q type Ca2+‐channels. This novel mechanism is discussed with respect to Alzheimer's disease, that is linked for most cases to the apoE ε‐allelic variation (ε4 > ε3 > ε2).
Guardians of our future: New Zealand mothers and sustainable biotechnology

In year two of a three-year project, New Zealand mothers of children aged 10 and under were interviewed to examine the social, cultural and spiritual dimensions of biotechnology. Ten focus groups were conducted and used “sustainable biotechnology” as a center-point for discussion, concentrating on four different biotechnology scenarios. The findings of the research were consistent with year one and with findings on the general public throughout the world. Further insights revealed in year two suggested that women saw their and future generations' quality of life as intimately intertwined with the health of the environment, making the environment particularly important. Because of this, anything that had potentially negative consequences on the ecosystem was perceived to pose a threat to the woman, her family and future generations. The need for strict controls to be put in place by regulatory and research authorities was therefore seen as an important step in allaying her fears. True partnership and participation was seen as critical, since it would only be by such means that mothers would feel they were in control of the safety of their own children.
Strategic management accounting: a UK hotel sector case study

Explores the use which is made of strategic management accounting in the hotel sector through case studies at six major UK hotel groups. Uses the definition of strategic management accounting – “the provision and analysis of management accounting data relating to business strategy: particularly the relative levels and trends in real costs and prices, volumes, market share, cash flow and the demands on a firm′s total resources”. The results demonstrate that the accounting function in hotel groups is becoming increasingly involved in strategic management accounting, both in planning and in ad hoc exercises on the market conditions and competitor analysis. The widespread adoption of strategic management accounting is consistent with the open and relatively homogeneous nature of the industry and the high degree of competitiveness among the hotel groups in the market.
A novel frequency domain equalization method for single-carrier wireless transmissions over doubly-selective fading channels

A novel iterative frequency domain equalization method is proposed for single-carrier (SC) based wireless systems operating over a time- and frequency-selective (or doubly-selective) channel. We adopt the basis expansion channel model (BEM) to approximate the doubly-selective channel with a set of Fourier exponentials. Using BEM, time-varying multipath interference is translated into inter-carrier-like interference in the frequency domain. We design a low-complexity iterative method which relies on a sliding-window-based MMSE widely-linear filter with inter-carrier interference cancellation, and iterated time-domain soft-decisions. Simulations are shown to justify the validity of our approach and the results indicate that this approach outperforms the high-complexity linear block MMSE equalizer and other iterative approaches of similar complexity.
The Coexistence of Psoriasis Vulgaris, Sjögren's Syndrome, and Hashimoto's Thyroiditis

A 52‐year‐old woman presented with psoriasis vulgaris, Sjögren's syndrome, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis with a 5‐year history. She had a number of immunological abnormalities and typical psoriatic plaques over her entire body. The relationship between psoriasis, Sjögren's syndrome, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis is discussed from the viewpoint of immunology, and similar cases in the literature are reviewed. This is the first report of a coexistence of psoriasis vulgaris, Sjögren's syndrome, and Hashimoto's thyroiditis.
Health Authorities, Priority‐setting and Resource Allocation: A Study in Decision‐making in New Labour's NHS

This paper analyses the decision-making process of health authorities under New Labour in the NHS through a study of their qualitative responses to questionnaires. We find a considerable frustration and cynicism with the government's plans for reform, with its interference at the local level with services, and an acknowledgement of the differences between health authorities’ practice and what they believe the government requires, with, often, only minimal effort being made attempting to achieve new governmental performance targets. We conclude by making suggestions for an alternative strategy less likely to antagonize local health service providers.