Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Assessing urban vulnerability and social adaptation to risk: Evidence from Santo Domingo

Urban areas are becoming increasingly risky places to live, especially for low-income residents of cities in developing countries. Exposure to environmental risk and hazard has stimulated a range of work examining the physical processes creating these hazards, and the human processes that lead to vulnerability. Both approaches are useful, but are in danger of focusing on proximate rather than underlying causes. The concept of 'adaptive potential' is introduced in this paper to expose the social base of vulnerability. It offers a framework for broadening the analysis of risk to include an examination of local social assets. Such assets may already be used in confronting vulnerability, or they may be more latent; in either case, they offer a way for strategic policy interventions to enhance community resilience with regard to future risk at a time of growing environmental uncertainty. Adaptive potential is applied to a case study community in Santo Domingo.
Shorter, Cheaper, Quicker, Better: Linking Measures of Household Food Security to Nutritional Outcomes in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Uganda, and Tanzania

Using nationally representative household survey data from five countries -- three from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal) and two from Sub-Saharan Africa (Tanzania and Uganda) -- this paper conducts a systematic assessment of the correlation between various measures of household food security and nutritional outcomes of children. The analysis, following the universally accepted and applied definition of food security, is based on some of the most commonly used indicators of food security. The results show that the various measures of household food security do appear to carry significant signals about the nutritional status of children that reside within the household. This result holds even after the analysis controls for a wide array of other socio-economic characteristics of the households that are generally also thought to be associated with the quality of child nutrition. If using these food security indicators as proxy measures for the underlying nutritional status of children is of some interest, then the results show that simple, cost-effective, and easy-to-collect measures, such as the food consumption score or the dietary diversity score, may carry at least as much information as other measures, such as per capita expenditure or the starchy staple ratio, which require longer and costlier surveys with detailed food consumption modules. Across five different countries in South Asia and Africa, the results suggest that the food consumption score, in particular, performs extremely well in comparison with all other measures from the perspective of nutritional targeting as well as for monitoring nutritional outcomes.
Instability of sensory histidine kinase mRNAs in Escherichia coli

Background: Regulating mRNA stability is one of the essential mechanisms in gene expression. In order to identify genes from Escherichia coli whole genome whose expression is effectively modulated during the process of mRNA decay, we previously performed differential display‐PCR as the first step. In the screening, it was suggested that two mRNAs from the histidine kinase genes, narX and yojN, in a two‐component signal transduction system, were extremely unstable. In this study we analysed the stability of sensory kinase mRNAs, e.g. arcB, barA, rcsC, narQ, narX and evgS mRNA.
Intramedullary Pressure and Pulmonary Function During Total Knee Arthroplasty

Twenty-eight patients who underwent unilateral total knee arthroplasty and 20 patients who underwent simultaneous bilateral total knee arthroplasties participated in this study and were randomized to have either a fluted or round 10-mm diameter femoral intramedullary alignment rod used during surgery. The intramedullary rods were cannulated and connected with pressure tubing to a monitor which provided measurements of pressure at the tip of each rod. Arterial blood gas measurements on room air were obtained before and on the morning after surgery. An arterial line was placed and an arterial blood gas measurement was obtained at the time of skin incision and again after tourniquet release. Pulmonary shunt was calculated from the arterial blood gas measurements. Intramedullary pressure during rod insertion was significantly higher for the groups of patients having the round compared with the fluted rod. The change in pulmonary shunt during surgery was lowest for the patients in the unilateral group having the fluted rod and highest for the patients in the bilateral group having the round rod. A fluted rather than a round intramedullary alignment rod should be used to minimize intramedullary pressure and pulmonary shunting during unilateral and bilateral total knee arthroplasties.
Koro—A Culture-bound Depersonalization Syndrome

The term “koro” refers to an unfamiliar state of acute anxiety with partial depersonalization leading to the conviction of penile shrinkage and to fears of dissolution. Among the South Chinese (Cantonese) koro is known as suk-yeong. Van Brero in 1897 first discussed the psychopathology of this syndrome on the basis of cases described in South Celebes. He thought it was a peculiar manifestation of obsessional-compulsive illness. After many years the syndrome again received attention from Van Wulftten Palthe (1934), who concluded that it was an unusual form of anxiety neurosis. Slot in the same year also gave an account of it in the Dutch literature. Van Wulftten Palthe (1936, 1937) further mentioned the existence of corresponding female cases who complained of shrinking of the vulval labia and the breasts. He made a distinction between a real anxiety state and an imaginary organic illness based on folk belief, comparable for example to the popular notion in Southern Europe that urinating against the wind would cause a person to “catch a cold” in the metaphorical sense of getting gonorrhoea.
Smoking in dialysis patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of mortality and cardiovascular morbidity.

BACKGROUND Cigarette smoking is associated with increased cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in the general population, but the effect of smoking on these outcomes in the dialysis population is less well studied. STUDY DESIGN Systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies. SETTING & POPULATION Adults treated with long-term hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis. SELECTION CRITERIA FOR INCLUDED STUDIES: Cohort studies of unselected dialysis patients reporting the association between smoking status and cardiovascular morbidity and/or mortality. PREDICTOR Smoking status (determined using patient report). OUTCOMES (1) All-cause or cardiovascular mortality; (2) incident cardiovascular events. RESULTS We identified 34 studies that fulfilled all inclusion criteria. Of these, 26 studies provided data for smoking and mortality and 10 (n = 6,538) were included in a meta-analysis. The pooled HR for all-cause mortality in smokers compared with nonsmokers was 1.65 (95% CI, 1.26-2.14; P < 0.001). 11 studies provided data for smoking and incident cardiovascular events; 5 (pooled n = 845) were included in a meta-analysis. The pooled HR for composite cardiovascular events in smokers compared with nonsmokers was 1.01 (95% CI, 0.98-1.05; P = 0.4). LIMITATIONS Data for these meta-analyses were heterogeneous. Few individual studies assessed smoking as the primary variable of interest. CONCLUSIONS Active smoking is associated with a significant increase in all-cause mortality in dialysis patients, although there was no corresponding increased risk of cardiovascular events.
Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools

"Inside Urban Charter Schools "offers an unprecedentedly intimate glimpse into the world of charter schools by profiling five high-performing urban charter schools serving predominantly low-income, minority youth in Massachusetts. Interviews, focus groups, and classroom observations conducted over the course of two years flesh out rich and colorful portraits of daily life in these schools. Using an analytic framework grounded in research on nonprofit management and effective schools, the authors show that these schools excel along the organizational dimensions of structure, systems, human resource strategies, culture, and clarity of mission. By raising provocative questions for parents, educators, policymakers, and scholars, the book makes a powerful contribution to important conversations about the purpose of K 12 schooling in the twenty-first century and what it will take to enable all schools whether charter or traditional to successfully educate all students. "
The New Finance: The Case Against Efficient Markets

1. Search for the Grail. 2. The Old Finance. 3. How Long is the Short Run? 4. The Ancient Finance. 5. The Past and the Future. 6. The Race Between Value and Growth. 7. Surprise or Risk Premium? 8. "V" 9. The Holy Grail. 10. Dawn of the New Finance. 11. Final Words. Glossary.
Against the Tide: The Commencement of Short Selling and Margin Trading in Mainland China

type="main" xml:id="acfi12032-abs-0001"> China's recent removal of short-selling and margin trading bans on selected stocks enables testing of the relative effect of margin trading and short selling. We find the prices of the shortable stocks decrease, on average, relative to peer A-shares and cross-listed H-shares, suggesting that short selling dominates margin trading effects. Contrary to the regulators' intention and recent developed market empirical evidence, liquidity declines and bid-ask spreads increase in these shortable stocks. Consistent with Ausubel (1990), these results imply that uninformed investors avoid the shortable stocks to reduce the risk of trading with informed investors.
Addressing uncertainty in UAV navigation decision-making

We present an analytic framework for modeling and measuring uncertainty for the scenario of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) cooperatively searching for a moving target. Uncertainty exists in a UAVs assessment of teammate locations, target locations, and sensor results. As is frequently done, our framework employs probabilistic maps to represent uncertain information regarding the UAVs environment. We present new methods to update the probabilistic maps when information arrives from onboard sensors or teammate UAVs. When new information is missing or delayed, we propose a novel and straightforward diffusion approach to update probabilistic maps. The UAVs make navigation decisions based on response to potential fields generated by the probabilistic maps. Since map data have uncertainty, this leads to decision-making in uncertainty. We conclude by describing how uncertainty in the environment translates into a unique measure, velocity vector dispersion (DV), which describes the uncertainty in the UAVs navigation decision. Thresholds related to DV may be useful to guide real-time decision policies. We present simulation results that show how the use of diffusion affects the time to locate targets. We also describe how DV varies during UAV flight and comment on its utility.
Changing education for diversity

IntroductionReforming education for diversityleavening power with social justiceBuilding community-based education through critical policy makingChanging the education of Aboriginal peoplesChanging the education of girls from immigrant culturesChanging the education of the urban poorChanging the education of minority language groupsMaking the educational world safe for students from diverse backgroundsBibliographyIndex.
On the Use of Distributional Weights in Social Cost-Benefit Analysis

In the cost-benefit analysis of commodity taxes or subsidies, distributional weights complicate the standard textbook "triangle analysis. " Net benefits are maximized with optimal subsidies in some circumstances, optimal taxes in others. Demand and supply elasticities play important roles in determining these weighted-welfare effects of commodity taxation. I then explore how to use distributional weights (a) to analyze investment projects and (b) to determine an optimum income-tax structure. In all these applications, the use of distributional weights is shown to have very strong and (to many people) disquieting implications. A final section explores alternative "solutions" to these difficulties.
Bank Debt and Performance of Continental European Firms

When the source of external capital for Continental European firms is examined, debt markets have historically supplied a much larger percentage of the external capital than equity markets, and firms rely much more on bank debt than bonds for their external funds. In this environment banks have incentives to either monitor or actually manage firms depending on their relative debt stake in those firms. The objective of this paper is to assess the association between firm performance and level bank debt for firms from seven Continental European countries. After controlling for firm- and country-specific characteristics, we find bank debt is correlated with a firm's accounting performance as measured by return on assets (ROA) and return on shareholders' funds. When repeating the analysis on a country-by-country basis, an association is found between bank debt and ROA.
Statistical Methods – Does Anyone Really Use Them?

Abstract Students taking courses in quality management at Luleå University of Technology receive extensive education in statistical methods. To improve the education and to understand what kind of competence students need when they graduate, a survey was preformed examining how and to what extent the methods Statistical Process Control, Capability Analysis and Design of Experiments are used by organisations hiring the alumni. The result shows that the students employed in the Swedish industrial sector witness a modest use of statistical methods, while use of statistical methods in other sectors hiring the alumni is uncommon. Lack of competence and resources within the organizations are stated as hindrances to expanded use. Conclusions from the study are that implementation techniques must be emphasized in the curriculum and that different types of courses should be given – practical, hands-on courses for engineers, managers and others working in organizations. Furthermore, courses offered at universities must have a strong focus on practical problems such as difficulties randomizing experiments and that graphical methods should be favoured.
Market orientation and market strategy profiling: an empirical test of environment‐behaviour‐action coalignment and its performance implications

Organizational performance is greatly influenced by employee behaviours and the resulting market orientation that they possess. Market orientation is a behavioural culture that affects strategy formulation and strategy implementation, and how an organization interacts with its environment and adjusts to changes within that context. The relationship between market orientation and performance is robust across several environmental contexts that are characterized by varying degrees of market turbulence, competitive intensity, and products/services introduction rates. This study identifies co‐aligned market orientation and strategy profiles corresponding to unique competitive contexts that represent best practices for an organization seeking to maximize performance in a high technology environment. This relationship becomes dynamic when one considers the assertion that organization culture is synonymous with strategy and the evidence that the external environment affects organizational culture. As a result, the ability to profile ideal orientations will have significant strategic and performance implications for organizations that will contribute to the development of a sustainable competitive advantage.
Robustness of a 3 min all‐out cycling test to manipulations of power profile and cadence in humans

The purpose of this study was to assess whether end‐test power output (EP, synonymous with ‘critical power’) and the work done above EP (WEP) during a 3 min all‐out cycling test against a fixed resistance were affected by the manipulation of cadence or pacing. Nine subjects performed a ramp test followed, in random order, by three cadence trials (in which flywheel resistance was manipulated to achieve end‐test cadences which varied by ∼20 r.p.m.) and two pacing trials (30 s at 100 or 130% of maximal ramp test power, followed by 2.5 min all‐out effort against standard resistance). End‐test power output was calculated as the mean power output over the final 30 s and the WEP as the power–time integral over 180 s for each trial. End‐test power output was unaffected by reducing cadence below that of the ‘standard test’ but was reduced by ∼10 W on the adoption of a higher cadence [244 ± 41 W for high cadence (at an end‐test cadence of 95 ± 7 r.p.m.), 254 ± 40 W for the standard test (at 88 ± 6 r.p.m.) and 251 ± 38 W for low cadence (at 77 ± 5 r.p.m.)]. Pacing over the initial 30 s of the test had no effect on the EP or WEP estimates in comparison with the standard trial. The WEP was significantly higher in the low cadence trial (16.2 ± 4.4 kJ) and lower in the high cadence trial (12.9 ± 3.6 kJ) than in the standard test (14.2 ± 3.7 kJ). Thus, EP is robust to the manipulation of power profile but is reduced by adopting cadences higher than ‘standard’. While the WEP is robust to initial pacing applied, it is sensitive to even relatively minor changes in cadence.
The Place Premium: Wage Differences for Identical Workers Across the U.S. Border

This paper compares the wages of workers inside the United States to the wages of observably identical workers outside the United States-controlling for country of birth, country of education, years of education, work experience, sex, and rural-urban residence. This is made possible by new and uniquely rich microdata on the wages of over two million individual formal-sector wage-earners in 43 countries. The paper then uses five independent methods to correct these estimates for unobserved differences and introduces a selection model to estimate how migrants'wage gains depend on their position in the distribution of unobserved wage determinants. Following all adjustments for selectivity and compensating differentials, the authors estimate that the wages of a Bolivian worker of equal intrinsic productivity, willing to move, would be higher by a factor of 2.7 solely by working in the United States. While this is the median, this ratio is as high as 8.4 (for Nigeria). The paper documents that (1) for many countries, the wage gaps caused by barriers to movement across international borders are among the largest known forms of wage discrimination; (2) these gaps represent one of the largest remaining price distortions in any global market; and (3) these gaps imply that simply allowing labor mobility can reduce a given household's poverty to a much greater degree than most known in situ antipoverty interventions.
The conserved transcriptome in human and rodent male gametogenesis

We report a cross-species expression profiling analysis of the human, mouse, and rat male meiotic transcriptional program, using enriched germ cell populations, whole gonads, and high-density oligonucleotide microarrays (GeneChips). Among 35% of the protein-coding genes present in rodent and human genomes that were found to be differentially expressed between germ cells and somatic controls, a key group of 357 conserved core loci was identified that displays highly similar meiotic and postmeiotic patterns of transcriptional induction across all three species. Genes known to be important for sexual reproduction are significantly enriched among differentially expressed core loci and a smaller group of conserved genes not detected in 17 nontesticular somatic tissues, correlating transcriptional activation and essential function in the male germ line. Some genes implicated in the etiology of cancer are found to be strongly transcribed in testis, suggesting that these genes may play unexpected roles in sexual reproduction. Expression profiling data further identified numerous conserved genes of biological and clinical interest previously unassociated with the mammalian male germ line.
Parallel and local diagnostic algorithm for wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the sensing data of nodes have spatial similarity, so the network fault diagnosis can be done by comparing the data of neighbor nodes. When sending data, the node may send erroneous data because of the interference of the signal, thereby affecting the diagnostic accuracy of the network. This paper presents a parallel and local diagnostic algorithm (PLD) for WSN. In order to avoid the problem of signal collision, this paper constructs a special diagnosis structure, which effectively avoids the influence of signal collision on node diagnosis. The algorithm can be divided into three parts: generate the candidate sub-node set, establish the fault diagnosis structure and the diagnostic test. Diagnostic test contains four rounds. The first three rounds quickly compare perceived data of adjacent nodes in parallel, greatly reduces the time of diagnosis. In the fourth round, the most reliable node is tested with the first three rounds. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can guarantee higher diagnostic accuracy.
What Work? What Life? What Balance? Critical Reflections on the Work-Life Balance Debate

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to initiate critical reflection on the assumptions and evidence underpinning the work‐life balance debate. Design/methodology/approach – The article reviews a range of international literature focused on and related to the work‐life balance debate and issues. Findings – In the work‐life balance debate, over‐work is perceived as the problem. Nevertheless, beyond working time and the provision of flexible working practices to enable child care, there is little in the debate abut the need to change work per se. The debate also narrowly perceives “life”, equating it with women's care work, hence the emphasis again of family‐friendly polices. Research limitations/implications – The article suggests that reconceptualisation is required in analyses of both work‐life balance and the relationship between work and life. Practical implications – The article implies that current work‐life balance policies are myopic in terms of addressing the needs and aspirations of employees. Originality/value – The article offers a synthesis of evidence that is wider than that typical in current analyses of work and life.
Intellectual Capital: Who Counts, Controls?

Intellectual capital and related topics including intangibles, innovation, and knowledge have rapidly climbed the management research agenda. Their significance lies in the contribution these assets make to sustained value creation, a central mantra within contemporary business strategy. A premium has been placed on the successful management of such assets, and within this program, the accountancy profession has found itself challenged to devise effective means of counting and controlling them. Driven by a distinctly managerial agenda, the majority of developments within intellectual capital accounting to date have exhibited the negative characteristics that critical accounting researchers associate with the extension of the prevailing accounting calculus into new fields. Nevertheless, in some recent contributions there are indications of how an alternative, more progressive approach, that of intellectual capital self‐accounts, might be fashioned. As a consequence, the emergence of intellectual capital ma.