Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Casa delle Libertà: A House of Cards?

Summary The Italian centre-right was ‘constructed’ by Silvio Berlusconi in the run-up to the 1994 general election, which marked the beginning of the Second Republic. It includes Forza Italia, the National Alliance, the Northern League and the Union of Christian Democrats (UDC), parties which are all very different in terms of their political identities, histories, geographies and social composition. The centre-right thus looks like a complex mosaic, whose pieces stay together only thanks to the role of the leader and his ‘personal party’, Forza Italia, and to the use of the media and political marketing to communicate with the electorate. These are the twin pillars of ‘the Berlusconi model’. This article contends that Berlusconi represents both a resource and a limit for the centre-right, as it is difficult for such a heterogeneous coalition to define a common identity and pursue coherent political projects and policies while relying so heavily on the role of the leader. This explains the cyclical alternation within the coalition of phases of integration and rapprochement with others of tension and open conflict. Since the coalition's election victory in 2001, it has found it difficult to meet the contrasting demands of its diverse electorate for neo-liberalism, devolution, major public works, infrastructure creation and tax cuts. This task has been made more problematic by the international instability and economic stagnation of recent years. This article puts forward the hypothesis that ‘the Berlusconi model’, which gave life to the centre-right, now appears to be worn out and will prove difficult to revive.
Efficient filtering in publish-subscribe systems using binary decision diagrams

Implicit invocation or publish-subscribe has become an important architectural style for large-scale system design and evolution. The publish-subscribe style facilitates developing large-scale systems by composing separately developed components because the style permits loose coupling between various components. One of the major bottlenecks in using publish-subscribe systems for very large scale systems is the efficiency of filtering incoming messages, i.e., matching of published events with event subscriptions. This is a very challenging problem because in a realistic publish subscribe system the number of subscriptions can be large. We present an approach for matching published events with subscriptions which scales to a large number of subscriptions. Our approach uses binary decision diagrams, a compact data structure for representing Boolean functions which has been successfully used in verification techniques such as model checking. Experimental results clearly demonstrate the efficiency of our approach.
Why People Stay: The Impact of Community Context on Nonmigration in the USA

La plupart des travaux sur les migrations americaines reposent sur des explications de la mobilite au niveau individuel. Notre etude va plus loin en examinant l’effet du contexte local sur les probabilites de ne pas migrer entre 1985 et 1990. En utilisant les donnees individuelles extraites des bulletins complets du recensement de 1990, nous rattachons les adultes recenses en 1990 a leur comte de residence en 1985. Ensuite, en exploitant les caracteristiques macro-structurelles des comtes d’origine (fournies par le recensement de l’economie) et les caracteristiques des individus (fournies par le recensement decennal), nous elaborons un modele lineaire hierarchique a deux niveaux. Au niveau 1, nous construisons une equation logistique qui modelise les probabilites individuelles de ne pas migrer. Au niveau 2, nous modelisons d’abord les effets contextuels additifs de la localite d’origine sur ces probabilites, puis les effets d’interaction (inter-niveaux). Les facteurs locaux se classent en deux categories : 1) la situation economique, qui comprend les habituels facteurs « repulsifs » au niveau agrege; 2) les caracteristiques de la collectivite locale qui tendent a retenir les gens la ou ils vivent. Les resultats precisent le lien qui existe entre le contexte local et les migrations individuelles et montrent les effets des structures economiques et sociales locales sur ces comportements individuels. Nous constatons que, une fois controles les facteurs economiques locaux et les caracteristiques individuelles, les particularites sociologiques des localites sont associees sur un mode additif a la propension a rester ou l’on est. De plus, nous observons que certaines caracteristiques des communautes locales interagissent avec les caracteristiques individuelles et familiales pour conditionner les effets des facteurs individuels sur la probabilite de migrer.
Smiling, Deferring, and Flirting

Using a gendered organization perspective, this research examines how restaurants structure gendered service encounters and how table servers perform gendered scripts of good service. Interview data from integrated wait staffs in five kinds of restaurants reveal three scripts of good service—friendliness, deference, and flirting. Waitresses were perceived as stereotypically friendly and openly displayed cheerfulness in coffee shops. Resisting subservience was easier for waiters and in restaurants that gender the work role as “waitering. ” Waitresses performed a “job flirt” in restaurants that cast the work role as “waitressing. ” To give good service is to “do gender” by performing gendered scripts, by differentially applying scripts to waiters and waitresses, and by structuring scripts into waitering and waitressing work roles.
Restructuring the Bulgarian Wood-Processing Sector: Linkages between Resource Exploitation, Capital Accumulation, and Redevelopment in a Postcommunist Locality

Based on recent primary research, in this paper I explore the emerging contours of the postcommunist forest-products sector in Bulgaria and, in particular, the ramifications for community-level restructuring in a small, mountainous region located in the southwestern part of the country. After ten years of postcommunist transformation, the current government has only very recently initiated the task of wholesale reform of communist-era structures extant within the forestry and forest-products sectors. This is an unavoidably complex process, involving reorganising tenure over forest resources (with some measure of restitution of formerly private forest resources to precommunist era owners), privatising and decentralising logging and related activities in the woods, redefining the role of the state in oversight, management, and planning, and the development of a supportive institutional context for the growth of, in particular, small and medium-sized private enterprises throughout the forest-products chain. Restructuring of the wood-products sector in one Bulgarian mountain locality is the primary focus of the paper, with a five-fold descriptive typology of wood-processing enterprises proposed. Based in part on manifest differentiations in corporate governance and institutional network orientation (including markets), this typology assists with the analysis of challenges to sustainable local restructuring in resource dependent communities. These models are discussed in turn in terms of both the theoretical implications for Bulgaria's ‘transition model of development’ and the empirical ramifications for regional development and well-being.
Carnivalesque politics: A Bakhtinian case study of contemporary Arab political humor

Abstract This paper is a case study of contemporary Arab political jokes in the light of Bakhtinian theory of carnival and the carnivalesque. According to this analysis, these political jokes represent a variety of texts whose topics revert around “glorifying”, mocking, parodying, scatologizing, and ultimately betraying the ruler. These types of political jokes reflect a textual representation of the life cycle of the oppressive ruler, which begins with comic “crowning” and glorification and ends in “decrowning” and comic death. Within this cycle, political jokes represent a kind of hidden dialogue between the oppressed and their marginalized discourse, and the regime and its dominant autocratic discourse. These jokes are disturbing to the regime, leading perhaps to punishment, but they do not necessarily either undermine or actually support the regime. Like carnival, the telling of these jokes in a repressive context merely builds a second world outside the oppressive world of the regime and offers an alternative framework to the regime's policies.
An extended service recovery model: the moderating impact of temporal sequence of events

– The purpose of this empirical paper is to explore for the first time, in a temporal sequence of events framework, how the various forms of justice (procedural, interactional and outcome) impact on customer satisfaction with service recovery. , – Employing scenarios, an experimental design was employed with data collected from a student sample in an Eastern collectivist culture (Thailand). , – The results reveal that affirmation of perceptions of all three forms of justice positively impact overall service recovery satisfaction. However, unlike previous models of recovery satisfaction, the findings presented here suggest a temporal sequence of events model involving the causal ordering of the three justice dimensions such that distributive justice mediates the relationship between procedural and interactional justice, and ultimate recovery satisfaction. , – Based on the findings here, future studies using the three forms of justice should consider the temporal element and undertake longitudinal analysis. , – The findings suggest that organizations should pay special attention to delivering high levels of interactional and procedural justice as they precede, and have an impact on, subsequent perceptions of outcome justice (i.e. compensation, re‐done work, etc.) in a service recovery situation. , – This study adds to the knowledge on how firms can best recover from a service failure situation.
Growth in Children With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia During Treatment

Obesity is increasingly prevalent in affluent societies and portends considerable morbidity. This is especially true in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in whom the metabolic syndrome may begin during therapy, demanding clarification of the trajectory of weight gain so that effective interventions may be developed. In this retrospective study of body mass index from a single institution over a 20-year period, almost 15% of children with ALL were at risk of overweight or frankly overweight (body mass index >85th centile) at diagnosis. This proportion increased steadily, reaching 40% at the end of treatment. Strategies to limit weight gain will have to be instituted early in the management of children with ALL, and will probably have to be maintained throughout and after the completion of active treatment.
The Effects of CEO Pay Structure on Corporate Social Performance

Corporate social performance (CSP) is increasingly viewed as an important business outcome by researchers, investors, and society as a whole. Furthermore, empirical research indicates that CSP is positively related to corporate financial performance. These considerations lead to the question of whether CEO pay is properly structured to provide incentive to the CEO to improve firm CSP. In a sample of 313 firms, the authors found that a short-term CEO pay focus was negatively related to CSP, whereas a long-term focus was positively related to CSP. Implications of these results for future research and CEO pay design are presented.
Jogo com orientação : uma proposta metodológica para a educação física pré-escolar

** * RESUMO Este estudo investigou a influencia de distintos programas de movimento sobre o desenvolvimento motor e o engajamento de pre-escolares. Dele participaram 71 criancas, com idade entre 5 e 6 anos, da Associacao da Creche de Braga (Portugal). Os grupos experimentais beneficiaram-se de programas distintos ( Jogo com orientacao e Jogo livre em contexto enriquecido) . O TGMD–2 foi aplicado para a analise do desenvolvimento motor das criancas. Para se averiguar o seu engajamento nos programas, utilizou-se uma analise qualitativa e quantitativa das habilidades avaliadas no TGMD-2, realizadas pelas criancas nas sessoes. Os resultados revelaram que: (a) a participacao das criancas no programa Jogo com orientacao promoveu ganhos em seu desempenho motor, ao passo que mudancas nao foram observadas nas do grupo Jogo livre em contexto enriquecido , nem nas do grupo-controle; e (b) durante as intervencoes, as criancas do grupo Jogo com orientacao apresentaram engajamento superior ao das do grupo Jogo livre em contexto enriquecido .
Objective Self-Awareness and Causal Attributions for Self-Standard Discrepancies: Changing Self or Changing Standards of Correctness

An experiment tested the hypothesis that causal attributions for self-standard discrepancies determine whether the motivation to reduce such discrepancies results in changing self toward standards or changing standards toward self. In this experiment, individuals who were either high or low in self-focus were led to direct attention either toward their performance or toward the standard for that performance immediately following a self-standard discrepancy induction. Predictions under high self-focus conditions were confirmed. High self-focus persons who focused on the standard attributed more causality for their performance to that cognitive element than to self and changed the standard toward self more than did high self-focus persons who focused on their performance and vice versa. Implications of these findings for theories involving operation of the self-to-standard type of system are discussed.
Projecting Lattice Polytopes Without Interior Lattice Points

We show that up to unimodular equivalence in each dimension there are only finitely many lattice polytopes without interior lattice points that do not admit a lattice projection onto a lower-dimensional lattice polytope without interior lattice points. This was conjectured by Treutlein [Treutlein, J. 2008. 3-Dimensional lattice polytopes without interior lattice points. September 10, http://arXiv.org/abs/0809.1787. ] As an immediate corollary, we get a short proof of a recent result of Averkov, Wagner, and Weismantel [Averkov, G. , C. Wagner, R. Weismantel. 2010. Maximal lattice-free polyhedra: Finiteness and an explicit description in dimension three. Math. Oper. Res. Forthcoming. ], namely, the finiteness of the number of maximal lattice polytopes without interior lattice points. Moreover, we show that, in dimension four and higher, some of these finitely many polytopes are not maximal as convex bodies without interior lattice points.
Circulating cardiovascular biomarkers in recurrent atrial fibrillation: data from the GISSI‐Atrial Fibrillation Trial

Abstract. Latini R, Masson S, Pirelli S, Barlera S, Pulitano G, Carbonieri E, Gulizia M, Vago T, Favero C, Zdunek D, Struck J, Staszewsky L, Maggioni AP, Franzosi MG, Disertori M on the behalf of the GISSI‐AF Investigators (Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri”, Milan; Istituti Ospitalieri, Cremona; POL Madonna della Consolazione, Reggio Calabria; Ospedale Nuovo Girolimo Fracastoro, San Bonifacio; Ospedale Garibaldi‐Nesima, Catania; Ospedale Luigi Sacco, Milan, Italy; Roche Diagnostics, Rotkreuz, Switzerland; B.R.A.H.M.S. AG, Henningsdorf, Germany; ANMCO Research Center, Florence; and Ospedale Santa Chiara, Trento, Italy). Circulating cardiovascular biomarkers in recurrent atrial fibrillation: data from the GISSI‐Atrial Fibrillation Trial. J Intern Med 2011; 269: 160–171.
Daily sound recognition for elderly people using ensemble methods

This paper presents our investigations on automatic daily sound recognition using ensemble methods. Two benchmark datasets RWCP-DB and Sound Dataset are utilized for this purpose. A set of acoustic features for daily sound recognition is identified and used. First, sound classification is carried out using individual classifiers on both datasets. As the classification accuracy comes out lower with base classifiers as compared to the results reported in literature, ensemble methods are then employed for classification task. The ensemble methods prove to be effective and robust in recognizing daily sounds as they yield high recognition rates. The classification accuracies achieved by our proposed setup of ensemble methods are higher than those mentioned in literature for the two daily sound datasets.
The World Health Report 2000: 10 years on.

The publication of the World Health Report 2000 was an act of remarkable courage (WHO 2000). The World Health Organization (WHO) is extremely sensitive to complaints from health ministers in its member states and its legal department goes to enormous lengths to avoid anything being said that might be seen as critical even, as this author has experienced, of countries such as the USSR that no longer exist. Thus, few observers thought it was possible that the then DirectorGeneral, Gro Harlem Brundtland, would sanction the production of a ranking of the world’s health systems. Yet it did and the response was predictable. Those governments that scored highly, such as France, were delighted, while others, such as Brazil, that came much lower, formally expressed their displeasure at the WHO Executive Board (WHO 2001).
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute the Taylor Rule and Forecast Intervals for Exchange Rates Jian Wang Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

This paper attacks the Meese-Rogoff (exchange rate disconnect) puzzle from a different perspective: out-of-sample interval forecasting. Most studies in the literature focus on point forecasts. In this paper, we apply Robust Semi-parametric (RS) interval forecasting to a group of Taylor rule models. Forecast intervals for twelve OECD exchange rates are generated and modified tests of Giacomini and White (2006) are conducted to compare the performance of Taylor rule models and the random walk. Our contribution is twofold. First, we find that in general, Taylor rule models generate tighter forecast intervals than the random walk, given that their intervals cover out-of-sample exchange rate realizations equally well. This result is more pronounced at longer horizons. Our results suggest a connection between exchange rates and economic fundamentals: economic variables contain information useful in forecasting the distributions of exchange rates. The benchmark Taylor rule model is also found to perform better than the monetary and PPP models. Second, the inference framework proposed in this paper for forecast-interval evaluation can be applied in a broader context, such as inflation forecasting, not just to the models and interval forecasting methods used in this paper. West for invaluable discussions. We would also like to thank seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and the University of Houston for helpful comments. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the Board of Governors, or the Federal Reserve System. All GAUSS programs are available upon request.
Using machine learning to predict laboratory test results

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) substantially increases risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, whether glucose-lowering agents improve CV health is controversial, especially since rosiglitazone was reported in 2007 to increase rate of CV events despite powerful anti-hyperglycaemic action. New diabetes drugs are now required to undergo extensive testing to demonstrate they are at least safe to use. This study is the CV safety trial for liraglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 analogue used to reduce weight and improve glycaemia in T2DM. In this trial, approximately 10,000 patients randomly received daily liraglutide or a placebo injection and were followed up for a median of 3.8 years. The study was designed to demonstrate non-inferiority, but the key result was a significant reduction in fatal/ non-fatal CVD from 15 to 13% in liraglutide-treated patients. This equates to a number-needed to treat of 66 patients for three years to prevent one event. It should be noted that as patients were treated to glycaemic, blood pressure and lipid targets, there were differences in other diabetes and CV medications in the treatment groups, which could have independently influenced the outcome. Nevertheless, this is an important study, as the results presented suggest liraglutide is one of the few diabetes drugs which actually improves CV outcomes.
Variation in safety culture dimensions within and between US and Swiss Hospital Units: an exploratory study

Background The purpose of this study was to explore the variability in safety culture dimensions within and between Swiss and US clinical areas. Methods Cross-sectional design. The 30-item Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) was distributed in 2009 to clinicians involved in direct patient care in medical and surgical units of two Swiss and 10 US hospitals. At the unit level, results were calculated as the percentage of respondents within a unit who reported positive perceptions. MANOVA and ANOVA were used to test for differences between and within US and Swiss hospital units. Results In total, 1370 clinicians from 54 hospital units responded (response rate 84%), including 1273 nurses and 97 physicians. In Swiss hospital units, three SAQ dimensions were lower (safety climate, p=0.024; stress recognition, p<0.001; and perceptions of management, p<0.001) compared with US hospital units. There was significant variability in four out of six SAQ dimensions (teamwork climate, safety climate, job satisfaction and perceptions of unit management) (p<0.001). Moreover, intraclass correlations indicate that these four dimensions vary more at the unit level than hospital level, whereas stress recognition and working conditions vary more at the hospital level. Conclusions The authors found differences in SAQ dimensions at the country, hospital and unit levels. The general emphases placed on teamwork and safety climate in quality and safety efforts appear to be highlighting dimensions that vary more at the unit than hospital level. They suggest that patient safety improvement interventions target unit level changes, and they support the emphasis being placed on teamwork and safety climate, as these vary significantly at the unit level across countries.