Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identifying Belief-Based Targets for the Promotion of Leisure-Time Walking

Walking is the most common type of physical activity (PA) and the likely target of efforts to increase PA. No studies, however, have identified the belief-level correlates for walking using the theory of planned behavior. This study elicits salient beliefs about walking and evaluates beliefs that may be most important for walking-promotion campaigns. A random sample of 55 Canadian adults participated in the elicitation study, and the validation study includes 358 participants who completed measures of demographics, beliefs from the elicitation study, and self-reported walking behavior. Belief—behavior relationships show that almost all behavioral expectancies are correlates of intention and behavior, but normative and control expectancies are more select correlates. But when belief—behavior relations are evaluated by participants meeting PA recommendations, only beliefs about feeling good, appearance, stress relief, and time are significant. Public health efforts to promote walking should focus on making time for regular walking and the affective advantages that walking can provide.
Effective lay health worker outreach and media-based education for promoting cervical cancer screening among Vietnamese American women.

OBJECTIVES We sought to promote cervical cancer screening among Vietnamese American women in Santa Clara County, Calif. METHODS In 2001-2004, we recruited and randomized 1005 Vietnamese American women into 2 groups: lay health worker outreach plus media-based education (combined intervention) or media-based education only. Lay health workers met with the combined intervention group twice over 3 to 4 months to promote Papanicolaou (Pap) testing. We used questionnaires to measure changes in awareness, knowledge, and Pap testing. RESULTS Testing increased among women in both the combined intervention (65.8% to 81.8%; P<.001) and media-only (70.1% to 75.5%; P<.001) groups, but significantly more in the combined intervention group (P=.001). Among women never previously screened, significantly more women in the combined intervention group (46.0%) than in the media-only group (27.1%) obtained tests (P<.001). Significantly more women in the combined intervention group obtained their first Pap test or obtained one after an interval of more than 1 year (became up-to-date; 45.7% to 67.3%, respectively; P<.001) than did those in the media-only group (50.9% to 55.7%, respectively; P=.035). CONCLUSIONS Combined intervention motivated more Vietnamese American women to obtain their first Pap tests and to become up-to-date than did media education alone.
Long-Term Earnings Growth Forecasts, Limited Attention, and Return Predictability

Long-term earnings expectations are critically important to stock price valuations. We identify relative optimism and relative pessimism in long-term analyst forecasts by comparing these forecasts with implied short-term earnings growth forecasts across firms within the same industry. Stocks with relatively optimistic and relatively pessimistic long-term analyst forecasts have negative and positive risk-adjusted returns, respectively. This return predictability depends critically on short-term forecasts since relative optimism and relative pessimism originate from the slow diffusion of information from short-term to long-term analyst forecasts. Our results indicate that market participants have limited attention regarding the long-term earnings implications of information.
Valuing Freedoms: Sen's Capability Approach and Poverty Reduction

Friendship, knowledge of foreign groups, the ability to purchase milk and shoes, the scent of summer roses: of what interest is this type of information to economists? Sabina Alkire shows how Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's capability approach can be coherently---and practically---put to work in poverty reduction activities. Sen argues that economic development should expand 'valuable' freedoms. Alkire probes how we identify what is valuable. Foundational issues are addressed critically---dimensions of development, practical reason, culture, basic needs---drawing on Thomist authors who give central place to authentic participation. A participatory procedure for identifying capability change is then developed. Case studies of three Oxfam activities in Pakistan---goat-rearing, female literacy, and rose cultivation---illustrate this novel approach. Valuing Freedoms will be of considerable interest to economists, philosophers, development practitioners, and theologians, as well as to followers of Sen's work.
An Analysis of Historical and Future‐Oriented Information in Accounting‐Based Security Valuation Models*

The Ohlson (1995) and Feltham and Ohlson (1995) valuation model provides a rigorous framework for summarizing the information in expected future earnings and book values. However, the model provides little guidance on selecting an empirical proxy for expected future earnings. We examine whether and under what circumstances historical earnings and analyst earnings forecasts offer comparable explanation of security prices. This issue is of particular interest because analyst forecasts are less readily available than historical data. Under appropriate circumstances, historical data may allow wider use of the Feltham-Ohlson valuation model by researchers and investors. A related issue is the incremental explanatory power of historical earnings and realized future earnings (perfect-foresight forecasts) for security prices beyond analyst forecasts. If historical earnings are incrementally informative, that would suggest that analyst forecasts do not fully reflect price-relevant information in past earnings. If future earnings are incrementally informative, that would suggest that security prices reflect investors' implicit earnings forecasts beyond analyst forecasts. We examine these issues using a historical model (based on past earnings), a perfect-foresight model (based on realized future earnings), and a forecast model (based on Value Line earnings forecasts). All three models provide significant explanatory power for security prices, and each set of earnings data provides incremental explanatory power for prices when used with the other sets of earnings data. We estimate the models separately for firms with moderate and extreme earnings-to-price (E/P) ratios, a proxy for earnings permanence. For moderate-E/P firms, the historical model's explanatory power exceeds that of the perfect foresight model, and is indistinguishable from that of the analyst forecast model. In contrast, for extreme-E/P firms, the perfect-foresight model offers greater explanatory power than the historical model, but lower explanatory power than analyst forecasts. Our results suggest that financial analysts' forecasting efforts are best focused on firms whose earnings contain large temporary components (extreme E/P firms). However, in general, both historical data and analyst forecasts are complementary information sources for security valuation.
Segmental spinal dysgenesis: neuroradiologic findings with clinical and embryologic correlation.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Segmental spinal dysgenesis (SSD) is a rare congenital abnormality in which a segment of the spine and spinal cord fails to develop properly. Our goal was to investigate the neuroradiologic features of this condition in order to correlate our findings with the degree of residual spinal cord function, and to provide insight into the embryologic origin of this disorder. We also aimed to clarify the relationship between SSD and other entities, such as multiple vertebral segmentation defects, congenital vertebral displacement, and caudal regression syndrome (CRS). METHODS The records of patients treated at our institutions for congenital spinal anomalies were reviewed, and 10 cases were found to satisfy the inclusion criteria for SSD. Plain radiographs were available for review in all cases. MR imaging was performed in eight patients, one of whom also underwent conventional myelography. Two other patients underwent only conventional myelography. RESULTS Segmental vertebral anomalies involved the thoracolumbar, lumbar, or lumbosacral spine. The spinal cord at the level of the abnormality was thinned or even indiscernible, and a bulky, low-lying cord segment was present caudad to the focal abnormality in most cases. Closed spinal dysraphisms were associated in five cases, and partial sacrococcygeal agenesis in three. Renal anomalies were detected in four cases, and dextrocardia in one; all patients had a neurogenic bladder. CONCLUSION SSD is an autonomous entity with characteristic clinical and neuroradiologic features; however, SSD and CRS probably represent two faces of a single spectrum of segmental malformations of the spine and spinal cord. The neuroradiologic picture depends on the severity of the malformation and on its segmental level along the longitudinal embryonic axis. The severity of the morphologic derangement correlates with residual spinal cord function and with severity of the clinical deficit.
Construction and effects of markets in a local authority in New Zealand

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to make intelligible the rationalities and mechanisms through which markets have been proffered as alternatives or complements to traditional welfare-based provision and the effect of this development on the subjectivity of workers. Design/methodology/approach - The research involved collection of archival data, personal encounters and in-depth interviews with managers, staff and elected representatives at a local authority in New Zealand. Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality is mobilised to interpret these data. Findings - The paper finds that the mandatory changes required by legislation are associated with efforts to constitute local authority workers as business-like subjects through disciplinary mechanisms and technologies of the self. While markets have permeated this local authority, with some managers and staff claiming to work in a business-like manner and transact with each other as customers, these discourses have not vanquished the traditional concern of working for one organisation to serve the community. Research limitations/implications - While the results of this study are not generalisable to other contexts, they show how the introduction of New Public Management in a specific context is associated with a contest between the traditional discourses of community and public service, and the more recent ones of enterprise and customer. The paper illuminates the pathologies associated with these new technologies and how their implementation is often divergent from the rationalities in the name of which they are promoted. Practical implications - The paper will contribute to ongoing debate on how best to deliver public goods and services and especially, the limits and potential of markets. Originality/value - The paper's mobilisation of Foucault's governmentality framework in the study of a local authority case study in a contemporary setting is relatively unusual.
Where Do Women’s Jobs Come from?

We derive a 4-step process of occupational sex segregation from a case study of restructuring in a large American bank. This change was occasioned by a restructuring initiative that created new positions. Through interviews with employees and direct observation of work in four geographic regions, we identify four factors that underlie the process of resegregation: Managers built gendered assumptions into the new jobs; employees responded to these cues and to the characteristics of the jobs; management made job assignments that were consistent with both their assumptions and employees’choices; and both managers and employees developed shared gender norms associated with the new positions.
Modelling Sovereign Credit Spreads with International Macro-Factors: The Case of Brazil 1998–2009

This paper develops a macro-finance model of the Brazilian economy and its sovereign debt markets that allows for domestic and international macroeconomic influences as well as swings in investor confidence. It finds significant evidence of common trends in the US and Brazilian economies and bond markets as well as spillover effects from US inflation and business cycles to the Brazilian economy. The US Fed Funds rate influences Brazilian sovereign spreads, as do Brazilian inflation and policy rates. The Brazilian confidence factor dominates the behavior of the spreads during periods of crisis and we find that it also has a powerful effect on the level and volatility of macroeconomic variables. These results suggest that the macro-finance approach could throw light upon the behavior of other economies that are troubled by sovereign risk.
What made Ataturk's reforms possible?

Most studies on Ataturk's reforms focus on the intentions of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but the intentions alone do not explain how the reforms became possible. This paper rather looks at the conditions prevailing at the time of the reforms. It shows that, as a result of a variety of factors, both domestic and international, the state and society in Turkey were in contrasting situations: the former was exceptionally strong while the latter was seriously weakened and fragmented. The contingent nature of these conditions throws doubt on the reproducibility of Ataturk's reforms elsewhere.
Takeover Premiums and the Perception of Auditor Independence and Reputation

Abstract This study investigates if there is a positive association between takeover premiums and the bidder’s perception of target firm auditor reputation and independence. Using auditor size as a proxy for auditor reputation, the results indicate that in hostile takeovers target shareholders receive a higher takeover premium when a Big 4 auditor audits the target firm prior to the takeover. This result is only significant, however, in the period prior to the highly publicised audit failures. The impact of perceived auditor independence on takeover premiums is studied using the levels and size of non-audit service (NAS) fees provided by the target firm auditor. Using three proxies for auditor independence, the results show no association between perceived auditor independence and takeover premiums. This finding is robust to partitioning the sample by auditor size, takeover hostility and splitting the sample into takeovers pre- and post- the corporate scandals that occurred in 2002.
A Behavioral Model of Insurance Pricing

We develop a model of price competition between insurers where insurers maximize expected profit subject to a solvency constraint. Insurers base prices in part on expected losses, the estimates of which are updated in a Bayesian fashion. We assume that insurers are overconfident—they overestimate the precision of their private signal about expected losses. This leads insurers to overreact to their private signal on expected losses. The consequence is that prices may cycle and that the distribution of price changes may be positively skewed because of the role played by the solvency constraint.
Caffeine improves physical and cognitive performance during exhaustive exercise.

UNLABELLED Caffeine is thought to act as a central stimulant and to have effects on physical, cognitive, and psychomotor functioning. PURPOSE To examine the effects of ingesting a performance bar, containing caffeine, before and during cycling exercise on physical and cognitive performance. METHODS Twenty-four well-trained cyclists consumed the products [a performance bar containing 45 g of carbohydrate and 100 mg of caffeine (CAF), an isocaloric noncaffeine performance bar (CHO), or 300 mL of placebo beverage (BEV)] immediately before performing a 2.5-h exercise at 60% VO2max followed by a time to exhaustion trial (T2EX) at 75% VO2max. Additional products were taken after 55 and 115 min of exercise. Cognitive function measures (computerized Stroop and Rapid Visual Information Processing tests) were performed before exercise and while cycling after 70 and 140 min of exercise and again 5 min after completing the T2EX ride. RESULTS Participants were significantly faster after CAF when compared with CHO on both the computerized complex information processing tests, particularly after 140 min and after the T2EX ride (P < 0.001). On the BEV trial, performance was significantly slower than after both other treatments (P < 0.0001). There were no speed-accuracy tradeoffs (P > 0.10). T2EX was longer after CAF consumption compared with both CHO and BEV trials (P < 0.05), and T2EX was longer after CHO than after BEV (P < 0.05). No differences were found in the ratings of perceived exertion, mean heart rate, and relative exercise intensity (% VO2max; P > 0.05). CONCLUSION Caffeine in a performance bar can significantly improve endurance performance and complex cognitive ability during and after exercise. These effects may be salient for sports performance in which concentration plays a major role.
The impact of urban form on U.S. residential energy use

Abstract While the impact of urban form on transportation energy use has been studied extensively, its impact on residential energy use has not. This article presents a conceptual framework linking urban form to residential energy use via three causal pathways: electric transmission and distribution losses, energy requirements of different housing stocks, and space heating and cooling requirements associated with urban heat islands. Two of the three can be analyzed with available national data. After we control for other influences, residents of sprawling counties are more likely to live in single‐family detached houses than otherwise comparable residents of compact counties and also more likely to live in big houses. Both lead to higher residential energy use. Because of the urban heat island effect, residents of sprawling counties across the nation on average pay a small residential energy penalty relative to residents of compact counties. Implications for urban planning are explored.
Confirmation of subtle motor changes among presymptomatic carriers of the Huntington disease gene.

OBJECTIVE To confirm that subtle changes in motor function and reaction time are present in presymptomatic individuals carrying the expanded Huntington disease (HD) allele. DESIGN A case-control, double-blind study comparing presymptomatic HD gene carriers (PSGCs) and nongene carriers (NGCs) at risk for HD. SETTING The Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at a general clinical research center in a midwestern city. PARTICIPANTS Two hundred sixteen individuals at risk for HD who were asymptomatic by self-report and who did not have manifest HD on results of clinical examination, including PSGCs (n = 61) and NGCs (n = 155). MEASURES Molecular testing was used to determine the number of CAG repeats in the HD gene. A quantified neurologic examination and a battery of physiological measures of central nervous system function measuring speed of movement and reaction time were administered. RESULTS On neurologic examination, the PSGCs exhibited significantly more definite or possible abnormalities than NGCs for overall oculomotor function, saccade velocity, optokinetic nystagmus, chorea of the extremities, and dystonia of the extremities (P<.05). The PSGCs also had significantly slower performance for auditory reaction time, visual reaction time, visual reaction time with decision, movement time, movement time with decision, and button-tapping time, compared with the NGCs (P<.05). CONCLUSIONS Subtle changes in motor function, speed of movement, and reaction time are present in HD gene carriers who do not exhibit definite choreiform movements and who do not have sufficient signs to make a clinical diagnosis of HD. In addition, a trend toward slower speed of movement and reaction time was observed among this population as their neurologic abnormalities increased.
Determinants of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease : a genetic epidemiologic study

textabstractCreutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is the most common form of the human transmissible spongiform encephalopathies.1 The disease is characterised by rapid neurodegeneration leading to death within weeks to months. CJD is a rare disorder with an intriguing etiology, involving genetic and iatrogenic transmission. Ten to fifteen percent of patients with CJD are determined by mutations in the prion protein gene.2 The clinical expression of these familial forms is highly variable and may range from a ‘typical’ CJD phenotype with rapid deterioration to a slowly progressive dementia mimicking Alzheimer’s disease. Apart from the causative mutations, a common polymorphism within the prion protein gene determines susceptibility to CJD.3 Subjects who are homozygous for either allele of this polymorphism are at increased risk of CJD. There is growing evidence that this polymorphism further may influence clinical expression of CJD. Finally, the effect of the prion protein may extend to other forms of neurodegenerative disorders. Besides a role in rare diseases such as Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease and fatal familial insomnia, the gene may also have an effect on cognitive decline and dementia in the general population. Up to date, findings in this field have been inconsistent. The challenge for genetic epidemiology is to unravel the role of this gene in common neurodegenerative disorders. In about 5% of patients with CJD, the disease has been caused by iatrogenic transmission. Unintended transmission of CJD occurred in various ways and has led in some instances to epidemics of the disease.4 The most notorious epidemic started in the mid eighties and was due to human growth hormone administration. A second epidemic was related to dura mater transplantation. The clinical phenotype of patients with the iatrogenic form of CJD may depend on the mode of transmission as well as on the prion protein genotype. As a consequence, for each new epidemic parameters like the minimum effective dosage and the range of the incubation time are to be assessed. Case studies of individual patients may help in establishing the phenotype of the disease, which may facilitate an early identification of cases and ultimately may prevent further transmission of disease from human to human.
Information-Theoretic Privacy with General Distortion Constraints

The privacy-utility tradeoff problem is formulated as determining the privacy mechanism (random mapping) that minimizes the mutual information (a metric for privacy leakage) between the private features of the original dataset and a released version. The minimization is studied with two types of constraints on the distortion between the public features and the released version of the dataset: (i) subject to a constraint on the expected value of a cost function $f$ applied to the distortion, and (ii) subject to bounding the complementary CDF of the distortion by a non-increasing function $g$. The first scenario captures various practical cost functions for distorted released data, while the second scenario covers large deviation constraints on utility. The asymptotic optimal leakage is derived in both scenarios. For the distortion cost constraint, it is shown that for convex cost functions there is no asymptotic loss in using stationary memoryless mechanisms. For the complementary CDF bound on distortion, the asymptotic leakage is derived for general mechanisms and shown to be the integral of the single letter leakage function with respect to the Lebesgue measure defined based on the refined bound on distortion. However, it is shown that memoryless mechanisms are generally suboptimal in both cases.