Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom

Foreword or Preface Introduction: Suicide Bombers in Historical and Theoretical Perspective Nationalists and Baathists The Jihadi Salafis Suicide Terrorism in the Iraqi Insurgency The Ideology and Theology of Martyrdom Martyrdom Mythology in Iraq Arab Fighters in Iraq European Muslims in Iraq Implications for Theory and Policy
On the Biasedness of Forward Foreign Exchange Rates: Irrationality or Risk Premia?

In this article, the authors reconsider the K. A. Froot and J. A. Frankel (1989) results on the sources of forward discount bias. They question the economic validity of some estimation restrictions that they impose and, thus, are led to question some of their results. The authors employ a new exchange rate survey database that includes European Monetary System currencies and use univariate and pooling estimation techniques that impose fewer restrictions than those of Froot and Frankel to test their hypotheses. They find that the bias in the forward discount is attributable to both the failure of rational expectations and the existence of time-varying risk premia. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.
SCADA system cyber security — A comparison of standards

Cyber security of Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems has become very important. SCADA systems are vital for operation and control of critical infrastructures, such as the electrical power system. Therefore, a number of standards and guidelines have been developed to support electric power utilities in their cyber security efforts.
Flood preparedness : thoughts, feelings and intentions of the Dutch public

Despite the high levels of flood protection in the Netherlands, absolute safety is not guaranteed. Preparing Dutch society for potential flood disasters, including the preparedness of individual citizens, is one of the great challenges in future flood risk management. This thesis is aimed at increasing the understanding of citizens’ intentions in flood preparation. Knowledge of the determinants of citizens’ behavioural intentions is indispensable for developing well-founded, effective risk communication that is aimed at facilitating citizens’ flood preparedness decisions. To study those behavioural intentions, we have adopted the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM, Lindell & Perry, 2000, 2004) which provides a social-psychological perspective on how people decide whether or not to prepare for disasters. This thesis contains four studies. These studies draw from the data that have been collected in three questionnaire surveys that were performed in flood risk areas along the Dutch coast, branches of the rivers Rhine and Meuse, and Lake Marken.
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in HIV patients: Risk factors associated with colonization and/or infection and methods for characterization of isolates – a systematic review

Staphylococcus aureus is an important cause of infections and HIV-infected individuals are frequently susceptible to this pathogen. The aim of this study was to perform a systematic review to identify both the risk factors associated with colonization/infection by methicillin-resistant S. aureus in HIV patients and the methods used for characterization of isolates. An electronic search of articles published between January 2001 and December 2013 was first conducted. Among 116 studies categorized as being at a quality level of A, B or C, only 9 studies were considered to have high methodological quality (level A). The majority of these studies were retrospective (4/9 studies). The risk factors associated with colonization/infection by S. aureus were use of antimicrobials (4/9 studies), previous hospitalization (4/9 studies) and low CD4+ T lymphocyte counts (<200 cells/μl) (3/9 studies). Culture in mannitol salt agar (3/9 studies) and the latex agglutination test (5/9 studies) were the main methods used for bacterial phenotypic identification. Genotypic profiles were accessed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (6/9 studies) and USA300 was the most prevalent lineage (5/9 studies). Most isolates were resistant to erythromycin (3/9 studies) and susceptible to vancomycin (4/9 studies). Ultimately, use of antimicrobials and previous hospitalization were the main risk factors for colonization/infection by methicillin-resistant S. aureus in HIV-infected individuals. However, the numbers of evaluated patients, the exclusion and inclusion criteria and the characterization of the S. aureus isolates were not uniform, which made it difficult to establish the characteristics associated with HIV patients who are colonized/infected by S. aureus.
Regulation of cytochrome oxidase protein levels by functional activity in the macaque monkey visual system

The activity of cytochrome oxidase (CO), a mitochondrial enzyme of oxidative energy metabolism, is regulated by nerve cell functional activity. The mechanism of CO activity regulation was studied using histochemical and immunohistochemical methods to show the distributions of CO activity and protein, respectively, in the macaque monkey visual system under normal and experimental conditions. In normal animals, patterns of CO activity were found to reflect underlying patterns of CO protein distribution; for example, puffs of high CO activity in cortical area 17 contained high levels of CO protein. Experimental animals were injected monocularly with TTX for 3–4 weeks; this treatment blocks retinal impulses in the injected eye and results in decreased CO activity in lateral geniculate laminae and striate cortical columns normally driven by the treated eye. The experimentally induced decreases in CO activity were also found to reflect underlying parallel decreases in CO protein levels. These results suggest that CO activity is regulated mainly at the level of the local amount rather than the turnover number of the enzyme and imply that the rates of CO synthesis and/or degradation are regulated by neural functional activity.
Public Management Reform and Modernization: Trajectories of Administrative Change in Italy, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain

Contents: Foreword by Elio Borgonovi Preface by Christopher Pollitt 1. Introduction Part I: Public Management Reform in Italy 2. Reforming the Public Sector in a Politico-administrative Context in Motion 3. Financial Management, Audit and Performance Measurement, Personnel 4. Organizational Reforms 5. Explaining the Dynamics of Public Management Reform in Italy Part II: Comparative Analysis: Public Management Reform in Napoleonic States 6. Trajectories of Reform in France, Greece, Portugal, Spain - Comparison and Generalizations 7. Administrative Traditions and Models of Reform: Napoleonic Countries between Global Paradigms and the Neo-Weberian State References Index
International comparisons of Poverty Intensity: Index Decomposition and Bootstrap Inference

This paper proposes an alternative formulation for the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon (SST) index of poverty intensity that is appropriate for survey data with sampling weights. It also decomposes the SST index into the poverty rate, the average poverty gap ratio among the poor, and the overall Gini index of poverty gap ratios. To account for sampling variation in estimates of poverty intensity, this paper uses the bootstrap method to compute confidence intervals and presents international comparisons using Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data from the 1970s to the 1990s. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses indicate that the percentage change in poverty intensity can be approximated by the sum of percentage changes in the poverty rate and average poverty gap ratio, since changes in the overall Gini index of poverty gap ratios are negligible. In the early 1970s poverty intensity in Canada and the United States was almost indistinguishable, but in the 1970s Canadian poverty intensity decreased. Large increases in poverty intensity occurred in the 1980s in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.
DOES MARRIAGE REDUCE CRIME? A COUNTERFACTUAL APPROACH TO WITHIN‐INDIVIDUAL CAUSAL EFFECTS*

Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life- course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high-risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The data consist of criminal histories and death records for all 500 men plus personal interviews, using a life- history calendar, with a stratified subsample of 52 men followed to age 70. These data are linked to an extensive battery of individual and family background measures gathered from childhood to age 17— before entry into marriage. Applying IPTW to multiple specifications that also incorporate extensive time-varying covariates in adulthood, being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man. These results are robust, supporting the inference that states of marriage causally inhibit crime over the life course.
Coordinate regulation of the four tubulin genes of Chlamydomonas reinhardi.

During cell division and during the induction of tubulin synthesis that accompanies flagellar regeneration in Chlamydomonas reinhardi, four tubulin mRNAs of discrete molecular sizes are produced. During induction two beta tubulin mRNAs (2.47 kb and 2.34 kb) and two alpha tubulin mRNAs (2.26 kb and 2.13 kb) are synthesized in high abundance and in a closely coordinated fashion. Combined data from restriction enzyme mapping (i.e., Southern analysis) of genomic DNA and of Charon 30 recombinant clones bearing inserts of Chlamydomonas tubulin genes provide direct evidence for four distinct tubulin genes in this organism. Dot-blot analysis of the level of hybridization of a 32p nick-translated beta tubulin cDNA to genomic DNA from gametic cells and to a clone containing the beta 1 tubulin gene indicate that each beta 1 tubulin gene is present in one copy per cell. Additional hybridization experiments employing fragments of cDNA clones which selectively anneal to either the 3' or 5' portions of the two alpha tubulin genes or to one or both of the two beta tubulin genes suggest that each tubulin gene is actively transcribed to give rise to one of the four tubulin mRNAs. These observations further suggest that at most four basic types of tubulin subunits are produced by Chlamydomonas and that the heterogeneity of tubulin subunits reported to exist in the flagellar axoneme must arise as a result of post-translational modification.
Pattern classification using support vector machine ensemble

While the support vector machine (SVM) can provide a good generalization performance, the classification result of the SVM is often far from the theoretically expected level in practical implementation because they are based on approximated algorithms due to the high complexity of time and space. To improve the limited classification performance of the real SVM, we propose to use an SVM ensemble with bagging (bootstrap aggregating) or boosting. In bagging, each individual SVM is trained independently, using randomly chosen training samples via a bootstrap technique. In boosting, each individual SVM is trained using training samples chosen according to the sample's probability distribution, which is updated in proportion to the degree of error of the sample. In both bagging and boosting, the trained individual SVMs are aggregated to make a collective decision in several ways, such as majority voting, least squares estimation based weighting, and double-layer hierarchical combination. Various simulation results for handwritten digit recognition and fraud detection show that the proposed SVM ensemble with bagging or boosting greatly outperforms a single SVM in terms of classification accuracy.
My word is my bond; reputation as collateral in nineteenth century English provincial banking

There are few real-world economic transactions that do not involve an element of trust, yet in textbook economics trust is not prominently discussed. In that world, perfectly informed and computationally endowed agents reach optimal, enforceable decisions in continuously harmonizing exchanges. Trust is therefore linked to deviations from the textbook ideal: incomplete information, costly enforcement, and computational limitations faced by agents. Trust can then be thought of as an algorithm, in other words, a way of resolving uncertainty in a complex world. In this sense trust may be seen as a form of expectation concerning the behavior of other agents whose actions and intentions cannot be (fully) observed. This paper pursues this approach by “running the algorithm backwards” and trying to establish what factors led a 19th century provincial English bank to trust different loan applicants. Using a data-set of some 200 loan decisions, and knowing the size of collateral (if any) requested, we develop a method to estimate the probability that the bank attached to each borrower’s promise to repay (i.e., the trust the bank had towards the borrower), adjusting for stages in the business cycle. We then regress this estimated probability on a variety of observable borrower characteristics. We find that trust is not correlated with a priori expected variables, such as borrower’s assets or frequency of interaction. This suggests that trust was built up in other interactions, possibly through social or religious networks, and that the banking relationship reflected information available to bank directors other than what was purely pertinent to the borrowers’ economic conditions. This has strong implications for the allocation of credit to industry in 19th century England.
The international crime drop : new directions in research

Editors' Introduction PART I: INTERNATIONAL TRENDS Global Overview: International trends in Victimization and Recorded Crime J.van Dijk & A.Tseloni Crime Trends in Western Europe According to Official Statistics from 1990 to 2007 M.F. Aebi & A.Linde The Case of Australia and New Zealand P.Mayhew Trends in Violence Against Women: Some Good News and Some Bad News K.Kangaspunta & I.H. Marshall The Crime Drop in 'Non-Western' Countries: a Review of Homicide Data A.A. del Frate & G.Mugellini PART II: CRIME ANALYSIS AND PATTERNS Underlying Patterns within the England and Wales Crime Drop A.Britton , C.Kershaw , S.Osborne & K.Smith Crime, Inequality and Change in England and Wales L.Grove , A.Tseloni & N.Tilley The Crime Drop in Comparative Perspective: The Impact of the Economy and Imprisonment on American and European Burglary Rates R.Rosenfeld & S.F. Messner PART III: NEW PERSPECTIVES Security and the Drop in Car Theft in the United States S.Fujita & M.Maxfield Self-limiting Crime Waves J.van Dijk & B.Vollaard The Crime Drop Discourse - or the Illusion of Uniform Continental Trends: Switzerland as a Contrasting Case M.Killias & B.Lanfranconi Crime in the Broad Sweep of History M.Felson Towards a Comprehensive Research Plan on Opportunity Theory and the Crime Falls A.Tseloni , G.Farrell , N.Tilley , L.Grove , R.Thompson & L.Garius Editors' Conclusions: Understanding International Crime Trends: A Summing Up
Lack of replication of associations between multiple genetic polymorphisms and endurance athlete status in Japanese population

The aim of this study was to examine a polygenic profile related to endurance performance, based on current knowledge, in the Japanese population. We analyzed 21 genetic polymorphisms that have been reported to be associated with endurance performance and its related phenotypes in 175 endurance runners (60 international‐, 94 national‐, and 21 regional‐level) and 649 controls in the Japanese population. Then, we calculated the total genotype score (TGS) (maximum value of 100 for the theoretically optimum polygenic score) for endurance performance. There was no association between the TGS and endurance athlete status (Control: 49.0 ± 7.6, Regional: 47.3 ± 7.6, National: 49.1 ± 5.7, and International: 48.2 ± 7.0, P = 0.626). These results suggested that TGSs based on the 21 previously published endurance performance‐associated polymorphisms do not influence endurance running performance in the Japanese population. Nevertheless, some marginal tendencies have to be noted: the frequencies of the ACTN3 R577X rs1815739 RR+RX genotype and the GNB3 rs5443 CC+CT genotype were higher in international athletes than in controls (85% vs. 73.6%, P = 0.042 and 90% vs. 76%, P = 0.007, respectively), but not significantly different after Bonferroni correction.
The Distributional Welfare Effects of Rising Prices in the United States: The 1970's Experience

This paper presents estimates of the distributional welfare impacts ofthe actual price rises of energy and nonenergy commodities during the1970-80 decade in the United States. Measures of welfare changes basedon net compensating variations are computed for families that differ with respect to demographic characteristics, initial total expenditurelevels, and total expenditure growth profiles over the decade. For comparison, measures of welfare change based solely on the changes inenergy prices are computed. The author shows that welfare differencesdue to initial expenditure levels or demographic profiles are minor incomparison to welfare differences due to different expenditure growthprofiles. Copyright 1986 by American Economic Association.
Re: ‘‘Stener-like’’ lesion in the little finger Dear Sir, Stener lesions (interposition of the adductor pollicis

Churchill M, Citron N. Isolated subluxation of the extensor pollicis longus tendon. J Hand Surg Br. 1997, 22: 790–792. Lin SC, Huang HY, Lin CJ, Chiu HY. A simple splinting method for correction of supple congenital clasped thumbs in infants. J Hand Surg Am. 1999, 24: 612–614. White JW, Jensen WE. The infant’s persistent thumb-clutched hand. J Bone Joint Surg Am. 1952, 34: 680–688. Young CM, Rayan GM. The sagittal band: anatomic and biomechanical study. J Hand Surg Am. 2000, 25: 1107–1113.
Tissue Extracellular Matrix Nanoparticle Presentation in Electrospun Nanofibers

Biomaterials derived from the decellularization of mature tissues retain biological and architectural features that profoundly influence cellular activity. However, the clinical utility of such materials remains limited as the shape and physical properties are difficult to control. In contrast, scaffolds based on synthetic polymers can be engineered to exhibit specific physical properties, yet often suffer from limited biological functionality. This study characterizes composite materials that present decellularized extracellular matrix (DECM) particles in combination with synthetic nanofibers and examines the ability of these materials to influence stem cell differentiation. Mechanical processing of decellularized tissues yielded particles with diameters ranging from 71 to 334 nm. Nanofiber scaffolds containing up to 10% DECM particles (wt/wt) derived from six different tissues were engineered and evaluated to confirm DECM particle incorporation and to measure bioactivity. Scaffolds containing bone, cartilage, and fat promoted osteogenesis at 1 and 3 weeks compared to controls. In contrast, spleen and lung DECM significantly reduced osteogenic outcomes compared to controls. These findings highlight the potential to incorporate appropriate source DECM nanoparticles within nanofiber composites to design a scaffold with bioactivity targeted to specific applications.
Multi-scale autoregressive processes

Abstract : In many applications (e.g. recognition of geophysical and biomedical signals and multiscale analysis of images), it is of interest to analyze and recognize phenomena occuring at different scales The recently introduced wavelet trans- forms provide a time-and-scale decomposition of signals that offers the possibil- ity of such analysis. At present, however, there is no corresponding statistical framework to support the development of optimal, multiscale statistical sig- nal processing algorithms. In this paper we describe such a framework. The theory of multiscale signal representations leads naturally to models of signals on trees, and this provides the framework for our investigation. In particular, in this paper we describe the class of isotropic processes on homogenous trees and develop a theory of autoregressive models in this context. This leads to generalizations of Schur and Levinson recursions, associated properties of the resulting reflection coefficients, and the initial pieces in a system theory for multiscale modeling.
Metabolically healthy obesity and the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes: the Whitehall II cohort study

Aim The metabolically healthy obese (MHO) phenotype refers to obese individuals with a favourable metabolic profile. Its prognostic value is unclear and may depend on the health outcome being examined. We examined the association of MHO phenotype with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD) and type 2 diabetes. Methods and results Body mass index and metabolic health, assessed using the Adult Treatment Panel-III (ATP-III) criteria, were assessed on 7122 participants (69.7% men) from the Whitehall II study, aged 39–63 years in 1991–93. Incident CVD (coronary heart disease or stroke) and type 2 diabetes were ascertained from medical screenings (every 5 years), hospital data, and registry linkage until 2009. A total of 657 individuals (9.2% of the cohort) were obese and 42.5% of these were classified as MHO in 1991–93. Over the median follow-up of 17.4 years, there were 828 incident cases of CVD and 798 incident cases of type 2 diabetes. Compared with metabolically healthy normal weight individuals, MHO subjects were at increased risk for CVD (HR = 1.97, 95% CI: 1.38–2.80) and type 2 diabetes (3.25, 95% CI: 2.32–4.54). There was excess risk in metabolically unhealthy obese compared with MHO for type 2 diabetes (1.98, 95% CI: 1.39–2.83) but not CVD (1.23, 95% CI: 0.81–1.87). Treating all measures as time varying covariates produced similar findings. Conclusion For type 2 diabetes, the MHO phenotype is associated with lower risk than the metabolically unhealthy obese, but for CVD the risk is as elevated in both obesity phenotypes.
In Situ Ca2+ Imaging Reveals Neurotransmitter Receptors for Glutamate in Taste Receptor Cells

The neurotransmitters at synapses in taste buds are not yet known with confidence. Here we report a new calcium-imaging technique for taste buds that allowed us to test for the presence of glutamate receptors (GluRs) in living isolated tissue preparations. Taste cells of rat foliate papillae were loaded with calcium green dextran (CaGD). Lingual slices containing CaGD-labeled taste cells were imaged with a scanning confocal microscope and superfused with glutamate (30 μm to 1 mm), kainate (30 and 100 μm), AMPA (30 and 100 μm), or NMDA (100 μm). Responses were observed in 26% of the cells that were tested with 300 μm glutamate. Responses to glutamate were localized to the basal processes and cell bodies, which are synaptic regions of taste cells. Glutamate responses were dose-dependent and were induced by concentrations as low as 30 μm. The non-NMDA receptor antagonists CNQX and GYKI 52466 reversibly blocked responses to glutamate. Kainate, but not AMPA, also elicited Ca2+ responses. NMDA stimulated increases in [Ca2+]i when the bath medium was modified to optimize for NMDA receptor activation. The subset of cells that responded to glutamate was either NMDA-unresponsive (54%) or NMDA-responsive (46%), suggesting that there are presumably two populations of glutamate-sensitive taste cells—one with NMDA receptors and the other without NMDA receptors. The function of GluRs in taste buds is not yet known, but the data suggest that glutamate is a neurotransmitter there. GluRs in taste cells might be presynaptic autoreceptors or postsynaptic receptors at afferent or efferent synapses.