Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Defense Expenditures, Economic Growth, and The “Peace Dividend”

Despite the proliferation of studies on the impact of military spending on economic growth, it is still not known whether defense spending hinders or promotes growth. Most analysts attribute the lack of consistent/robust findings to three problems: the lack of a sound theory of defense-growth trade-offs, an inadequate research design, and a failure to account for the externality effects that defense spending might have on other parts of the economy. In this study, the authors try to remedy these problems by (1) relying on a model of the defense-growth trade-off that is grounded in the neoclassic theory of growth, (2) estimating this model using time-series data on 103 countries, and (3) explicitly accounting for the externality effects of defense spending by the use of a multisectorial model. The results show that, regardless of the specification of the models, and contrary to most cross-national studies, military expenditures have a significant positive effect on growth in only about 10% of the cases.
The effect of age on the development and outcome of adult sepsis*

Objective:Sepsis is an increasingly common and lethal medical condition that occurs in people of all ages. The influence of age on sepsis risk and outcome is incompletely understood. We sought to determine the independent effect of age on the incidence, severity, and outcome of adult sepsis. Design:Longitudinal observational study using national hospital discharge data. Setting:Approximately 500 geographically separated nonfederal acute care hospitals in the United States. Patients:Patients were 10,422,301 adult sepsis patients hospitalized over 24 yrs, from 1979 to 2002. Interventions:None. Measurements and Main Results:Incident sepsis cases were age adjusted and characterized by demographics, sources and types of infection, comorbid medical conditions, and hospital discharge status. Elderly patients (≥65 yrs of age) accounted for 12% of the U.S. population and 64.9% of sepsis cases, yielding a relative risk of 13.1 compared with younger patients (95% confidence interval, 12.6–13.6). Elderly patients were more likely to have Gram-negative infections, particularly in association with pneumonia (relative risk, 1.66; 95% confidence interval, 1.63–1.69) and to have comorbid medical conditions (relative risk, 1.99; 95% confidence interval, 1.92–2.06). Case-fatality rates increased linearly by age; age was an independent predictor of mortality in an adjusted multivariable regression (odds ratio, 2.26; 95% confidence interval, 2.17–2.36). Elderly sepsis patients died earlier during hospitalization, and elderly survivors were more likely to be discharged to a nonacute health care facility. Conclusions:The incidence of sepsis is disproportionately increased in elderly adults, and age is an independent predictor of mortality. Compared with younger sepsis patients, elderly nonsurvivors of sepsis die earlier during hospitalization and elderly survivors more frequently require skilled nursing or rehabilitative care after hospitalization. These findings have implications for patient care and health care resource prioritization and provide insights for expanded scientific investigations and potential patient interventions.
Media Exposure, Public Policy Pressure, and Environmental Disclosure: An Examination of the Impact of Tri Data Availability

The disclosure of environmental information in corporate financial reports has been a topic of interest within the accounting profession for more than two decades. Previous research shows the extent of this disclosure varies both across firms and across time (see, e.g., Freedman and Wasley, 1990; Blacconiere and Patten, 1994; Gamble et al., 1995; Gray et al., 1995). Not surprisingly, a growing body of disclosure research is focusing on what explains the variation (see, e.g., Gray et al., 1995; Deegan and Rankin, 1996; Hackston and Milne, 1996; Walden and Schwartz, 1997).
Determining Factors of Private Investments: An Empirical Analysis for Turkey

Private investment plays a pivotal role in the free market economy. In the contemporary economic thinking private sector has a weighty and important place in the investment and production based growth. Considering the multifaceted nature of private investments, determining the factors which have effects on private investments gain importance. This paper aims to determine the factors which affect private investments in long-run in Turkey. To this end, the long-run private investment equation is estimated via bounds test (ARDL) approach to co-integration. Estimated coefficients of the variables show that in the long-run real GDP, real exchange rate, ratio of private sector credit to GDP, private external debt, inflation, and trade openness have a significant impact on private investments.
Serum levels of 5-chloro-7-iodo-8-quinolinol and its toxicity in various animals.

During long-term chronic intoxication studies, serum levels were measured in dogs and monkeys orally given 5-chloro-7-iodo-8-quinolinol (Clioquinol or Chinoform) (CF) with fixed or increasing doses. Typical neurotoxic symptoms and histological changes developed both in the adult and infant dogs, while the symptoms were poorly required in the monkeys which also showed neurohistological changes. The minimum serum levels of CF at the beginning of intoxication were 6.0-22.6 μg/ml in the adult dogs administered with 100 mg/kg/day, 0.1-1.9 μg/ml in the infant dogs with 740 mg/kg/day, and 2.6-8.8 μg/ml in the monkeys with 1100 mg/kg/day. The single dose experiments were also carried out in mice, rabbits and man. The maximum serum levels of CF reached for the corresponding dosages, (μg/ml)/(mg/kg) were ; 7.2/100 in mice, 0.5-0.7/100 in the rabbits and 2.7-5.8/7-9 in man. The data indicates the relatively easy absorption of CF in man. The relative molar abundance of CF, the glucuronide (CF-G) and the sulfate (CF-S) at maximum serum levels were CF-S&lneCF-G>CF in mice, CF-G>CF-S>CF in rabbits, CF-G>CF-S>CF in monkeys, CF>CF-S>CF-G in dogs and CF>CF-G>CF-S in man.
The Determinants of Future U.S. Monetary Policy: High-Frequency Evidence

This paper examines the determinants of future U.S. monetary policy by studying the relationship between a predictor of the future direction of monetary policy and a pertinent information set. Specifically, we investigate the impact of the surprise component of an array of macro-economic announcements upon federal funds futures rates. This investigation is conducted using high-frequency intraday data in order to examine the exact timing of rate reactions to announcements. In doing this, we find that Non-farm Payrolls and Civilian Unemployment announcements play a dominant role in determining future monetary policy. Moreover, we document evidence that shows that the release of such information is rapidly incorporated into rates, particularly when considering federal funds futures contracts traded via an electronic trading platform (as opposed to an open-auction trading platform). Copyright (c) 2010 The Ohio State University.
Analytical Expressions for the Resistance of Grounding Grids in Nonuniform Soil

Some improvements and extensions of certain resistance formulas for grounding grids are proposed enabling their application at two-layer soils for a wide range of soil parameters.To test the accuracy and the applicability margins of the expressions proposed as well as of some other available formulas , a comparative analysis of ground resistances for a set of sample grids is performed,using the complete digital model ing as the reference basis.
Trust and Social Capital in the Design and Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action: Case Studies on IP Coordinating Mechanisms in Plant Genetic Resources and Biomedicine

This paper aims at developing an original account of trust in the framework of large scale, international collective action institutions. Our research question focuses on the desired structures and mechanisms that are necessary to sustain the trust needed to uphold the effective operation of institutions for collective action. Our theoretical framework for studying trust is based on the social capital theory. Social capital is defined as the features of social organization, such as trust, networks and norms that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit. We claim that in different sectors and contexts stakeholders encounter difficulties in collaborating in setting up experimental institutions for collective action. In order to generate more collaboration, stakeholders need to create structures that incite actors to find the optimal way to sustain trust, to organizationally acknowledge and learn that process, and to nourish it with the precise normative idea behind the institutional apparatus. In the areas of plant genetic resources and biomedicine, stakeholders have encountered these difficulties while experimenting with different coordination mechanisms for dealing with the increased appropriation of knowledge through patents. Our analysis reflect the idea that institutions must be understood as complex pragmatic connectors of trust, i.e. social matrices of collective action that sustain individual commitment, where routine and reflexivity drive trust-based coordination mechanisms in interaction with their environment.
Unsupervised Representation Learning With Long-Term Dynamics for Skeleton Based Action Recognition

In recent years, skeleton based action recognition is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative to existing video-based approaches, beneficial from its robust and comprehensive 3D information. In this paper, we explore an unsupervised representation learning approach for the first time to capture the long-term global motion dynamics in skeleton sequences. We design a conditional skeleton inpainting architecture for learning a fixed-dimensional representation, guided by additional adversarial training strategies. We quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of our learning approach on three well-established action recognition datasets. Experimental results show that our learned representation is discriminative for classifying actions and can substantially reduce the sequence inpainting errors.
The Sports Development Potential of Sports Event Volunteering: Insights from the XVII Manchester Commonwealth Games

Abstract The sports development implications of investment in major sports events are not well researched, in contrast to an examination of the economic impacts of events. A sample of volunteers at the XVII Manchester Commonwealth is explored to identify how experience of volunteering at a major sports event affects interest, participation and subsequent volunteering in sport, and also volunteering in non-sport contexts. Factor analysis is employed to summarize volunteer experiences, and then regression analysis, which controls for differences in the sports and socio-economic characteristics. While there is some evidence that volunteering at a major event can raise interest, participation and volunteering in sport generally, capitalizing upon this will require focusing efforts on particular triggers for change. There appears to be much stronger potential opportunity to generate wider social capital than necessarily produce changes associated with sport.
Global versus local environmental impacts of grazing and confined beef production systems

Carbon footprint is a key indicator of the contribution of food production to climate change and its importance is increasing worldwide. Although it has been used as a sustainability index for assessing production systems, it does not take into account many other biophysical environmental dimensions more relevant at the local scale, such as soil erosion, nutrient imbalance, and pesticide contamination. We estimated carbon footprint, fossil fuel energy use, soil erosion, nutrient imbalance, and risk of pesticide contamination for five real beef background-finishing systems with increasing levels of intensification in Uruguay, which were combinations of grazing rangelands (RL), seeded pastures (SP), and confined in feedlot (FL). Carbon footprint decreased from 16.7 (RL–RL) to 6.9 kg (SP–FL) CO2 eq kg body weight−1 (BW; ‘eq’: equivalent). Energy use was zero for RL–RL and increased up to 17.3 MJ kg BW−1 for SP–FL. Soil erosion values varied from 7.7 (RL–RL) to 14.8 kg of soil kg BW−1 (SP–FL). Nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient balances showed surpluses for systems with seeded pastures and feedlots while RL–RL was deficient. Pesticide contamination risk was zero for RL–RL, and increased up to 21.2 for SP–FL. For the range of systems studied with increasing use of inputs, trade-offs were observed between global and local environmental problems. These results demonstrate that several indicators are needed to evaluate the sustainability of livestock production systems.
Defining Housing Market Areas Using Commuting and Migration Algorithms: Catalonia (Spain) as a Case Study

In the literature on housing market areas, different approaches can be found to defining them—for example, using travel-to-work areas and, more recently, making use of migration data. This paper proposes a simple exercise to shed light on which approach performs better. Using regional data for Catalonia, in Spain, housing market areas are computed with both commuting data and migration data. In order to decide which procedure shows superior performance, the uniformity of prices within areas is examined. The main finding is that commuting algorithms present more homogeneous areas in terms of housing prices.
Perceptions of benefit fraud staff in the UK: giving P.E.A.C.E. a chance

This article reports a study concerning perceptions of benefit fraud staff and of management concerning their own interviewing techniques and standards, and their views pertaining to a preferred model of interviewing. Interviewing fraud suspects forms an important task performed by Fraud Investigators (FIs) within the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) in the UK. Given this significance, it is surprising that there has been little analysis of the skills used to do this task. Current training consists of a course centred on an interviewing framework called the PEACE model, which was originally developed for police use. The research outlined in this paper examined both FIs and their managers’ perceptions and attitudes of the model and of their own practices. It was found that, while there was general support for the model, reservations were voiced over how effective PEACE may actually be in practice. These reservations centred on insufficient time to prepare for investigations along with a perceived inflexibility over the model’s framework. In, addition, it was highlighted that the absence of any national supervisory framework for investigative interviews should give the organization cause for concern in ensuring standards.
Comparing health policy: An assessment of typologies of health systems

Abstract Typologies have been central to the comparative turn in public policy and this paper contributes to the debate by assessing the capacity of typologies of health systems to capture the institutional context of health care and to contribute to explaining health policies across countries. Using a recent comparative study of health policy and focusing on the concept of the health care state the paper suggests three things. First, the concept of the health care state holds as a set of ideal types. Second, as such the concept of the health care state provides a useful springboard for analyzing health policy, but one which needs to be complemented by more specific institutional explanations. Third, the concept of the health care state is less applicable to increasingly important, non-medical areas of health policy. Instead, different aspects of institutional context come into play and they can be combined as part of a looser “organizing framework”.
Globalisation and Wage Inequalities, 1870-1970

This paper studies the impact of globalisation on wage inequality in eight now-developed countries during the century prior to 1970, using the same dependent variable and methodology as research on the impact of globalisation since 1970. The results suggest that the impact of globalisation was confined largely to the effects of the pre-1914 mass migrations in the United States and Canada. Powerful "domestic" forces, which included expanding home supplies of skilled labour, the growth of new skill-intensive industries, and fluctuations in the level of aggregate demand, had a greater impact on wage inequality for most of the period.
The Ordered Qualitative Model for Credit Rating Transitions

Information on the expected changes in credit quality of obligors is contained in credit migration matrices which trace out the movements of firms across ratings categories in a given period of time and in a given group of bond issuers. The rating matrices provided by Moody’s, Standard &Poor’s and Fitch became crucial inputs to many applications, including the assessment of risk on corporate credit portfolios (CreditVar) and credit derivatives pricing. We propose a factor probit model for modeling and prediction of credit rating matrices that are assumed to be stochastic and driven by a latent factor. The filtered latent factor path reveals the effect of the economic cycle on corporate credit ratings, and provides evidence in support of the PIT (point-in-time) rating philosophy. The factor probit model also yields the estimates of cross-sectional correlations in rating transitions that are documented empirically but not fully accounted for in the literature and in the regulatory rules established by the Basle Committee.
Exploring the Impact of Oil Revenues on OPEC Members' Macroeconomy

This study investigated the impact of oil revenues on the macroeconomy in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The panel model was used taking the period 2000–2011 when oil prices increased to high levels causing an increase in the oil revenues of the investigated countries. The results showed that oil exports revenues have a long‐run and a short‐run positive relationship with the gross domestic product, domestic investment, government consumption expenditure and the consumer price index. However, the results also showed that oil exports revenues have a long‐run and a short‐run negative relationship with the real exchange rate, gross domestic savings and the current account balance. Therefore, it was recommended that these countries should reduce their level of domestic consumption and increase their domestic savings. It was also recommended that these countries should reduce their real exchange rate appreciation and use more flexible exchange rate regimes.
Competing Bids, Target Management Resistance, and the Structure of Takeover Bids

We examine the structure of initial takeover bids and the frequency of observing competing bids and target management resistance. We find the use of cash is not consistently correlated with the frequency of competition or resistance and that the cost of acquiring information about a target is associated with the likelihood of competition and resistance. A high bid premium appears to deter competing offers and is also associated with a lower likelihood of resistance. Finally, target management resistance is associated with an increased likelihood of a competing offer arising and a larger increase in target shareholder wealth between the initial public announcement and outcome dates relative to the not-resisted subsample for both successful and unsuccessful acquisition proposals. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.
International Public Goods and Transfer of Technology under a Globalized Intellectual Property Regime: The Regulation of Public Goods

The paper examines the complex ways in which public goods are regulated. The provision and distribution of public goods is deeply affected by the degree of excludability of those goods and the regulatory context of that excludability. Using a decentered conception of regulation, the paper shows through various examples how state and non-state actors regulate each other's capacities to provide, access, and distribute public goods. The paper includes a discussion of the regulation of knowledge by the rules of intellectual property. Oxford University Press 2004; all rights reserved, Oxford University Press.
National Environmental Goals in Search of Local Institutions

This paper is an examination of Norway's national strategy for developing local environmental policies and institutions from the late 1980s to the present, and how this strategy has been influenced by changes in the dynamic between central government and local political institutions. It is argued that the strategy has changed during the period of study, shifting from a strong emphasis on the development of local institutions to an emphasis on the delegation of responsibilities from central government to local governing bodies. This new policy of delegation has been advanced at a time when municipalities are suffering from a weakened institutional capacity for environmental policy-making because of changes in the country's overall regulatory approach. The authors argue that this approach, which first and foremost has been motivated by national, macroeconomic objectives and the role of local government in service production, is inconsistent with the government's ambitions of a more important role for local government in environmental policy. The nature of environmental challenges, which often cut across political and administrative borders and often involve conflicts between different levels of government, suggests that local institutions are crucially important within the environmental policy domain.
AvidinOX-anchored biotinylated trastuzumab and pertuzumab induce down-modulation of ErbB2 and tumor cell death at concentrations order of magnitude lower than not-anchored antibodies

The oxidized version of Avidin, known as AvidinOX, was previously shown to link to tissue proteins upon injection or nebulization, thus becoming a stable receptor for biotinylated therapeutics. AvidinOX is currently under clinical investigation to target radioactive biotin to inoperable tumor lesions (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02053324). Presently, we show that the anti-ErbB2 monoclonal antibodies Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab can be chemically biotinylated while maintaining their biochemical and biological properties. By using several and diverse experimental conditions, we show that when AvidinOX is conjugated to tumor cells, low antibody concentrations of biotinylated Trastuzumab (bTrast) or Pertuzumab (bPert) prevent internalization of ErbB2, induce endoplasmic reticulum stress, cell cycle arrest and apoptosis leading to inhibition of proliferation and ErbB2 signaling. Moreover, we found that the treatment is able to induce down-modulation of ErbB2 thus bypassing the known resistance of this receptor to degradation. Interestingly, we show that AvidinOX anchorage is a way to counteract agonistic activities of Trastuzumab and Pertuzumab. Present data are in agreement with previous observations from our group indicating that the engagement of the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) by AvidinOX-bound biotinylated Cetuximab or Panitumumab, leads to potent tumor inhibition both in vitro and in animal models. All results taken together encourage further investigation of AvidinOX-based treatments with biotinylated antibodies directed to the members of the EGFR family.