Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Status and Prospects for Coastal Management in Korea

South Korea has entered into the implementation phase of a national coastal management program administered by the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries. The program is authorized by legislation adopted in 1998. Korea's coastal region, particularly its west and south coasts, is intensely utilized and is being transformed by large-scale reclamation projects and industrial centers. The implications of these changes and the forces affecting the program's mandate to institute a new, cross-sectoral planning and decision-making process are reviewed in light of the authority and current capacity of an incipient coastal management program. Principles to guide the current phase of the program's evolution are offered.
Monetary Policy Rules and Foreign Currency Positions

Using an endogenous portfolio choice model, this paper examines how different monetary policy regimes can lead to different foreign currency positions by changing the cyclical properties of the nominal exchange rate. We find that strict inflation-targeting regimes are associated with a short position in foreign currency, while the opposite is true for non inflation targeting regimes. We also explore how these different external positions affect the international transmission of monetary shocks through the valuation channel. When central banks follow inflation-targeting Taylor-type rules, valuation effects of monetary expansions are beggar-thy-self, but they are beggar-thy-neighbour in a money growth targeting regime (or when monetary policy puts weight on output stabilisation).
Analysis and Stabilization of a Smart Transformer-Fed Grid

The stability of the grid-connected inverters adopted in distributed energy resources (DERs) highly depends on the characteristics of the grid impedance. Hence, various active damping methods and adaptive control algorithms have been proposed for the control of the grid inverters. Differently from those existing solutions, this paper proposes to use a smart transformer (ST) to shape the grid impedance to interact with the controllers of local inverters, aiming at improving the stability of the local controllers as well as the overall grid. A main advantage of this solution is that it offers a pervasive service to all the available DERs, reducing the cost and design effort of the local controllers. Three active damping methods are presented in this paper and the implementation issues in the ST LV-side voltage controller are given. Moreover, the design criteria of the active damping methods considering the control performance of ST and the stability requirements of local DERs are presented. Analysis and experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed solution.
Price Effects around a Sales Tax Holiday: An Exploratory Study

Tax relief from a sales tax holiday depends on lower final prices for the eligible goods. In this article, prices are compared for ten goods across several retail locations before, during, and after the 2001 Florida sales tax holiday period. The comparison is also extended to the same items in a metropolitan statistical area just outside of Florida. The exploratory data indicate that before-tax prices are slightly higher in Florida retail establishments during the sales tax holiday, but it is not clear whether these prices reflect less generous markdowns by Florida managers or pricing decisions for much larger regions. Whichever the case, the tax policy forces consumers to speculate on non-holiday prices and choose items where the final price is, in fact, lower during the holiday.
Size Effects in the Market Valuation of Fundamental Factors

relative contributions to risk from foreign exchange and total interest rate volatilities and their correlation are examined in Dym, 'Measuring the Risk of Foreign Bonds," op. cit. Here we concentrate on attributing risk to the global and local decomposition of total interest rate movements. 12. Omitting the final six months of data from the sample largely preserves these nsk rankings. See footnote 7. 13. England had not yet agreed to join the EMS during the period under study. These results, as well as other conclusions of the study, are not inconsistent with the interest rate parity theorem. The latter relates interest rate differentials between pairs of countries to a one-point market estimate of expected exchange rate movements, as opposed to historical volatilities around a mean value, which are treated here. 14. Sellingforward theforeign exchange value of all the future cash flows of a foreign bond on their respective payment dates effectively transforms the bond into a US.dollar asset-that is, one sensitive to the US. interest rate environment. Except for the rare case of a temporary yield advantage, this defeats the purpose offoreign bond investing. Instead, short-datedforwards can be used to bedge the foreign exchange risk, while retaining the foreign interest rate exposure of the bond. In "Measuring the Risk of Foreign Bonds," op. cit., I describe this strategy and estimate the remaining risk due to the lack of a perfect hedge.
Labor Markets, Production Strategies, and Wage Bargaining Institutions

Transformed patterns of labor market governance occupy a central place in the study of contemporary West European political economies. Here, detailed analysis of the dramatic decentralization of wage bargaining in Sweden identifies organized employers, especially engineering employers, as the decisive agents of institutional change. We argue that the employer offensive should be understood as a response to a shift in power within old wage-bargaining institutions, introducing invasive regulation of firm-level pay practices and, at the same time, as a consequence of new flexibility-centered production strategies, giving rise to demands for more firm-level autonomy in wage bargaining. The exceptional features of the old Swedish bargaining and the particular needs of different sectors come into play as we seek to explain the mixed pattern of wage-bargaining changes across Western Europe.
Membership Participation in Workplace Unionism: The Possibility of Union Renewal

This article reports membership involvement (participation and commitment) in five case studies. Membership participation in and commitment to workplace unionism is greater than is customarily portrayed and, additionally, there are fluctuations in both. However, the solidarity dimension of commitment is more important in discussing participation than that of ideology since active members can have either an instrumental or an ideological orientation to unionism. Surges of involvement in a workplace are experienced in response to the impact of events in the local union environment, as mediated particularly by local leadership style. The possibility for union renewal comes through building up the base level of participation by careful local leadership so that members can more easily be encouraged to take part in collective activities in times of necessity.
Diagnosis of gestational diabetes mellitus in the community.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Diabetes in Pregnancy Study Group India (DIPSI) recommends 2-h Plasma glucose (PG) > or = 140 mg/dL with 75g oral glucose load to diagnose GDM, akin to WHO criteria. Recently, International Association of Diabetes in Pregnancy Study Group (IADPSG) recommends any one value of Fasting plasma glucose (FPG) > or = 92 mg/ dL, 1-h PG > or = 180 mg/dL or 2-h PG > or = 153 mg/dL to diagnose GDM. The objective of this study was to find out whether DIPSI guidelines could still be continued to diagnose GDM in our country, as this requires one blood test compared to three tests of IADPSG, which is expensive. METHOD Consecutive pregnant women (N = 1463) underwent 75g oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). The proportion of GDM was computed based on IADPSG and DIPSI criteria and the discordant pair of diagnosing GDM was examined by McNemar test. Analysis was two tailed and P-value <0.05 was considered for statistical significance. RESULT The prevalence of GDM was 14.6% (N = 214) by IADPSG criteria and 13.4% (n = 196) by DIPSI criteria. The discordant pair between the two criteria examined by McNemar's test indicated that there was no statistical significance (P = 0.21) and thereby implying a close agreement between these two procedures. CONCLUSION DIPSI procedure is cost-effective, without compromising the clinical equipoise and can be continued to diagnose GDM in our country, as well as other less resource countries.
On-Shelf Availability, Retail Performance, and External Audits: A Field Experiment

A potential answer to retailer's shelf out-of-stocks (OOS), where the item is in the store but customers cannot find it, is to employ third-party service providers to execute audits and corrections. However, given the nontrivial cost of executing external audits, it is still necessary to assess whether external audits are capable of reducing shelf-OOS, whether they can be performed in an economical way, and whether the benefits from the audits translate into higher sales. In an effort to address these questions, we partnered with a product manufacturer and a retail service provider and conducted a field experiment in a national retailer's store set. We used transactional data to detect abnormal operations and respond to possible shelf-OOS by sending auditors to correct empty shelves and incorrect inventory records. At the conclusion of the experiment, we found that Stock Keeping Units in the treatment group were less likely to have shelf-OOS and inventory record inaccuracies, and that our intervention had a positive effect on sales. Furthermore, we found that the external audit initiative is economically viable since these improvements required low auditing efforts after a transitional period, and in steady state the cost of running the program is a small fraction of the benefits it generates. We discuss the limitations of our study and the implications of our findings for researchers and practitioners.
Successful phytoremediation of crude-oil contaminated soil at an oil exploration and production company by plants-bacterial synergism

ABSTRACT Phytoremediation is a promising approach for the cleanup of soil contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons. This study aimed to develop plant-bacterial synergism for the successful remediation of crude oil-contaminated soil. A consortia of three endophytic bacteria was augmented to two grasses, Leptochloa fusca and Brachiaria mutica, grown in oil-contaminated soil (46.8 g oil kg−1 soil) in the vicinity of an oil exploration and production company. Endophytes augmentation improved plant growth, crude oil degradation, and soil health. Maximum oil degradation (80%) was achieved with B. mutica plants augmented with the endophytes and it was significantly (P < 0.05) higher than the use of plants or bacteria individually. Moreover, endophytes showed more persistence, the abundance and expression of alkB gene in the rhizosphere as well as in the endosphere of the tested plants than in unvegetated soil. A positive relationship (r = 0.70) observed between gene expression and crude oil reduction indicates that catabolic gene expression is important for hydrocarbon mineralization. This investigation showed that the use of endophytes with appropriate plant is an effective strategy for the cleanup of oil-contaminated soil under field conditions.
Investigation of energy demand modeling and management for local communities : investigation of the electricity demand modeling and management including consumption behaviour, dynamic tariffs, and use of renewable energy

Various forecasting tools, based on historical data, exist for planners of national networks that are very effective in planning national interventions to ensure energy security, and meet carbon obligations over the long term. However, at a local community level, where energy demand patterns may significantly differ from the national picture, planners would be unable to justify local and more appropriate intervention due to the lack of appropriate planning tools. In this research, a new methodology is presented that initially creates a virtual community of households in a small community based on a survey of a similar community, and then predicts the energy behaviour of each household, and hence of the community. It is based on a combination of the statistical data, and a questionnaire survey. The methodology therefore enables realistic predictions and can help local planners decide on measures such as embedding renewable energy and demand management. Using the methodology developed, a study has been carried out in order to understand the patterns of electricity consumption within UK households. The methodology developed in this study has been used to investigate the incentives currently available to consumers to see if it would be possible to shift some of the load from peak hours. Furthermore, the possibility of using renewable energy (RE) at community level is also studied and the results presented. Real time pricing information was identified as a barrier to understanding the effectiveness of various incentives and interventions. A new pricing criteria has therefore been developed to help developers and planners of local communities to understand the cost of intervention. Conclusions have been drawn from the work. Finally, suggestions for future work have been presented.
Environmental Liability Information and Bond Ratings

This research examines whether analysts' credit ratings of new bond issues reflect environmental liability information provided by the Environmental Protection Agency. Because environmental obligations provide no future economic benefits, we expect a negative relation between credit ratings and proxies for off-balance-sheet environmental obligations. To test this relation, we utilize a bond rating prediction model with a sample of new bond issues over the period 1990-1992. Our environmental liability estimates vary in size according to assumptions concerning the allocation of costs across responsible parties. Results indicate that environmental information is a significant negative factor in explaining bond ratings and increases the model's classification accuracy. Based on the overall analysis, the larger monetary measures of the firm's environmental liability are more consistent with bond rating analysts' assessment of the obligation. The general results are reinforced by additional analysis utilizing a model of bond rating changes over the period 1986-1997. This analysis indicates being named a potentially responsible party on additional environmental Superfund sites is associated with deterioration in a firm's credit rating when the firm has not previously been associated with a large number of these sites. This research establishes the value relevance of environmental information in debt markets and adds to prior studies that examine equity market effects.
HIV‐1 coreceptor usage in paired plasma RNA and proviral DNA from patients with acute and chronic infection never treated with antiretroviral therapy

Although an independent evolution of viral quasispecies in different body sites might determine a differential compartmentalization of viral variants, the aim of this paper was to establish whether sequences from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and plasma provide different or complementary information on HIV tropism in patients with acute or chronic infection. Tropism was predicted using genotypic testing combined with geno2pheno (coreceptor) analysis at a 10% false positive rate in paired RNA and DNA samples from 75 antiretroviral‐naïve patients (divided on the basis of avidity index into patients with a recent or long‐lasting infection). A high prevalence of R5 HIV strains (97%) was observed in both compartments (plasma and PBMCs) in patients infected recently. By contrast, patients with a long‐lasting infection showed a quite different situation in the two compartments, revealing more (46%) X4/DM in PBMCs than patients infected recently (3%) (P = 0.008). As‐ a knowledge of viral strains in different biological compartments might be crucial to establish a therapeutic protocol, it could be extremely useful to detect not only viral strains in plasma, but also viruses hidden or archived in different cell compartments to better understand disease evolution and treatment efficacy in patients infected with HIV. J. Med. Virol. 87:315–322, 2015. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Is there an association between microbial exposure and food allergy? A systematic review

The environmental factors driving the recent increase in the prevalence of food allergy (FA) are unclear. Since associations have been demonstrated between microbial exposure and the likelihood of eczema and respiratory allergies, we reviewed the evidence for FA. Medline was systematically searched from inception to the end of July 2012 for studies investigating links between FA and environmental exposures, likely to influence microbial exposure, such as Caesarean delivery, family size, day‐care attendance, childhood infections, immunizations and antibiotic use. We selected studies reporting food challenge data, reported doctor‐diagnosed (RDD) FA and food sensitization. Methodological differences and study heterogeneity precluded meta‐analysis. A total of 46 studies were identified, of which 28 (60.9%) were prospective and 13 (28.3%) used food challenges to diagnose FA. Caesarean delivery was investigated in 13 studies, of which three infant cohorts demonstrated an increase in challenge‐proven FA (one cohort) and food sensitization (two cohorts), and one cross‐sectional study reported increased RDDFA. Four studies investigated the effect of having siblings, with one infant cohort demonstrating less challenge‐proven FA and a cross‐sectional study showing a decrease in RDDFA. Attending childcare before 6 months was associated with less challenge‐proven FA in one cohort. A cross‐sectional survey identified an inverse relationship between hepatitis A serology and peanut sensitization. One of eleven trials investigating probiotics demonstrated a quicker acquisition of milk tolerance amongst allergic infants. Factors influencing microbial exposure may be partly responsible for rising FA burden, but further prospective studies using double‐blind placebo controlled food challenges as an outcome are required.
Long Term Incentive Plans, Executive Pay and UK Company Performance

In agency theory, the remuneration packages of executive directors in large companies are seen as an attempt to give them a pattern of rewards that aligns their interests more closely with shareholders as a whole. The sensitivity of total executive rewards to share price performance has become the conventional yardstick for judgements concerning whether reward packages do indeed serve shareholders' interests or executives themselves. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Energy-Efficient Algorithms for Dynamic Virtual Machine Consolidation in Cloud Data Centers

Cloud computing has become a significant research area in large-scale computing, because it can share globally distributed resources. Cloud computing has evolved with the development of large-scale data centers, including thousands of servers around the world. However, cloud data centers consume vast amounts of electrical energy, contributing to high-operational costs, and carbon dioxide emissions. Dynamic consolidation of virtual machines (VMs) using live migration and putting idle nodes in sleep mode allows cloud providers to optimize resource utilization and reduce energy consumption. However, aggressive VM consolidation may degrade the performance. Therefore, an energy-performance tradeoff between providing high-quality service to customers and reducing power consumption is desired. In this paper, several novel algorithms are proposed for the dynamic consolidation of VMs in cloud data centers. The aim is to improve the utilization of computing resources and reduce energy consumption under SLA constraints regarding CPU, RAM, and bandwidth. The efficiency of the proposed algorithms is validated by conducting extensive simulations. The results of the evaluation clearly show that the proposed algorithms significantly reduce energy consumption while providing a high level of commitment to the SLA. Based on the proposed algorithms, energy consumption can be reduced by up to 28%, and SLA can be improved up to 87% when compared with the benchmark algorithms.
Assessment of Methods for Passive Microwave Snow Cover Mapping Using FY-3C/MWRI Data in China

Ongoing information on snow and its extent is critical for understanding global water and energy cycles. Passive microwave data have been widely used in snow cover mapping given their long-time observation capabilities under all-weather conditions. However, assessments of different passive microwave (PMW) snow cover area (SCA) mapping algorithms have rarely been reported, especially in China. In this study, the performances of seven PMW SCA mapping algorithms were tested using in situ snow depth measurements and a one-kilometer Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS) snow cover product over China. The selected algorithms are the FY3 algorithm, Grody’s algorithm, the South China algorithm, Kelly’s algorithm, Singh’s algorithm, Hall’s algorithm and Neal’s algorithm. During the test period, most algorithms performed reasonably well. The overall accuracy of all algorithms is higher than 0.895 against in situ observations and higher than 0.713 against the IMS product. In general, Singh’s algorithm, Hall’s algorithm and Neal’s algorithm had poor performance during the test. Their misclassification errors were larger than those of the remaining algorithms. Grody’s algorithm, the South China algorithm and Kelly’s algorithm had higher positive predictive values and lower omission errors than those of the others. The errors of these three algorithms were mainly caused by variations in commission errors. Comparing to Grody’s algorithm, the South China algorithm and Kelly’s algorithm, the FY3 algorithm presented a conservative snow cover estimation to balance the problem between snow identification and overestimation. As a result, the overall accuracy of the FY3 algorithm was the highest of all the tested algorithms. The accuracy of all algorithms tended to decline with a decreased snow cover fraction as well as SD < 5 cm. All tested algorithms have severe omission errors over barren land and grasslands. The results shown in this study contribute to ongoing efforts to improve the performance and applicability of PMW SCA algorithms.
The ‘Mingrelian Question’: Institutional Resources and the Limits of Soviet Nationality Policy

Based on primary source materials from the Georgian Party archive and periodical press, this article examines the conflict between central and local elites in the Soviet Republic of Georgia over whether or not to grant linguistic and territorial rights to residents of one of its regions. The case demonstrates how the promises and aspirations of Soviet nationality policy were actually negotiated and interpreted on the local level in the early years of Soviet power, and how actors attempted to make use of nationality policy in order to mobilise the institutional resources available to them.