Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Is Foreign Direct Investment Productive in the Latin America Case? A Panel Co-integration Analysis, 1980–2002

This article estimates whether FDI flows—and other relevant variables—have had a positive and significant effect on Latin America's private investment spending over the 1980–2002 period. It is one of the first empirical studies to investigate the complementarity hypothesis between domestic private investment and FDI flows using recently developed panel unit root and panel co-integration analysis for the period in question. The article also addresses the important issue of whether changes in the real exchange rate (expenditure-switching policies) have a contractionary effect on the economies of Latin America. The results suggest that (lagged) gross FDI, public investment spending, and real credit to the private sector have a positive and significant effect on private capital formation, while lagged changes in the real exchange rate, particularly its volatility, as measured by the period standard deviation, have a negative effect. The article also finds that net FDI flows (a variable which deducts repatriation of profits and dividends) remain significant but their impact is reduced by more than half relative to their gross FDI counterpart.
Enhancement of in vitro activity of tuberculosis drugs by addition of thioridazine is not reflected by improved in vivo therapeutic efficacy.

OBJECTIVES Assessment of the activity of thioridazine towards Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), in vitro and in vivo as a single drug and in combination with tuberculosis (TB) drugs. METHODS The in vitro activity of thioridazine as single drug or in combination with TB drugs was assessed in terms of MIC and by use of the time-kill kinetics assay. Various Mtb strains among which the Beijing genotype strain BE-1585 were included. In vivo, mice with TB induced by BE-1585 were treated with a TB drug regimen with thioridazine during 13 weeks. Therapeutic efficacy was assessed by the change in mycobacterial load in the lung, spleen and liver during treatment and 13 weeks post-treatment. RESULTS In vitro, thioridazine showed a concentration-dependent and time-dependent bactericidal activity towards both actively-replicating and slowly-replicating Mtb. Thioridazine at high concentrations could enhance the activity of isoniazid and rifampicin, and in case of isoniazid resulted in elimination of mycobacteria and prevention of isoniazid-resistant mutants. Thioridazine had no added value in combination with moxifloxacin or amikacin. In mice with TB, thioridazine was poorly tolerated, limiting the maximum tolerated dose (MTD). The addition of thioridazine at the MTD to an isoniazid-rifampicin-pyrazinamide regimen for 13 weeks did not result in enhanced therapeutic efficacy. CONCLUSIONS Thioridazine is bactericidal towards Mtb in vitro, irrespective the mycobacterial growth rate and results in enhanced activity of the standard regimen. The in vitro activity of thioridazine in potentiating isoniazid and rifampicin is not reflected by improved therapeutic efficacy in a murine TB-model.
DiSAN: Directional Self-Attention Network for RNN/CNN-free Language Understanding

Recurrent neural nets (RNN) and convolutional neural nets (CNN) are widely used on NLP tasks to capture the long-term and local dependencies, respectively. Attention mechanisms have recently attracted enormous interest due to their highly parallelizable computation, significantly less training time, and flexibility in modeling dependencies. We propose a novel attention mechanism in which the attention between elements from input sequence(s) is directional and multi-dimensional (i.e., feature-wise). A light-weight neural net, "Directional Self-Attention Network (DiSAN)," is then proposed to learn sentence embedding, based solely on the proposed attention without any RNN/CNN structure. DiSAN is only composed of a directional self-attention with temporal order encoded, followed by a multi-dimensional attention that compresses the sequence into a vector representation. Despite its simple form, DiSAN outperforms complicated RNN models on both prediction quality and time efficiency. It achieves the best test accuracy among all sentence encoding methods and improves the most recent best result by 1.02% on the Stanford Natural Language Inference (SNLI) dataset, and shows state-of-the-art test accuracy on the Stanford Sentiment Treebank (SST), Multi-Genre natural language inference (MultiNLI), Sentences Involving Compositional Knowledge (SICK), Customer Review, MPQA, TREC question-type classification and Subjectivity (SUBJ) datasets.
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa

There is no doubt: we want to help. The well-documented horrors of extreme poverty around the world have created a moral imperative that people have responded to in their millions. Yet the poverty persists. At a time of unprecedented global prosperity, children are starving to death. Are we not being generous enough? Or is the problem somehow insoluble, an inevitable outcome of historical circumstance? In this provocative and compelling book, Dambisa Moyo argues that the most important challenge we face today is to destroy the myth that Aid actually works. In the modern globalized economy, simply handing out more money, however well intentioned, will not help the poorest nations achieve sustainable long-term growth. "Dead Aid" analyses the history of economic development over the last fifty years and shows how Aid crowds out financial and social capital and feeds corruption; the countries that have 'caught up' did so despite rather than because of Aid. There is, however, an alternative. Extreme poverty is not inevitable. Dambisa Moyo shows how, with improved access to capital and markets and with the right policies, even the poorest nations can prosper. If we really do want to help, we have to do more than just appease our consciences, hoping for the best, expecting the worst. We need first to understand the problem.
Defining training needs of five‐star hotel personnel: an application in the Antalya Region of Turkey

– To provide an useful way for tourism industry professionals regarding defining training needs of hotel personnel and noting the interests of hotel managers in the training subject. , – Questionnaire technique was used both for superiors and staff in a sampled five‐star hotel in Antalya. For statistical evaluation the SPSS program was used. , – According to the combination of the scoring table used in questionnaire, the training areas given before and in the sampled hotel, for superiors and staff most suggested are; organizational structure, management and organization, communication, motivation, accounting‐budgeting, foreign languages (German, English and French) and customer relations. , – It is not possible to generalize the findings for all five‐star hotels in Antalya, but this study can be evaluated as a starting point in defining training needs of hotel personnel. In addition to this, much more researches must be done may be in other parts of Turkey in order to compare the results of this study. , – Useful information in orienting tourism professionals to defining needs. Beside this study benefiting from managerial observations and forming of focus groups can be suggested. , – The findings can be seen as a practical implications for tourism professionals and academicians as well.
Formes d’action collective pour la gestion locale de la forêt camerounaise : organisations « modernes » ou institutions « traditionnelles » ?

L’implication des populations villageoises est maintenant un passage oblige de tout amenagement de la foret en Afrique Centrale. Au Cameroun, la concession d’exploitation et la foret communautaire offrent deux cadres d’implication des acteurs locaux dans la gestion forestiere. Cette forme nouvelle d’engagement passe par une identification puis une « officialisation » des « communautes locales » sous la forme de diverses institutions legalement reconnues mais qui relevent d’un certain nombre de pre-conceptions souvent fallacieuses sur l’organisation des populations locales pour utiliser le milieu naturel. La difficulte majeure de ces types formels de groupement « communautaire » est qu’ils sont detaches des systemes locaux de parente. Or ces derniers demeurent la clef d’entree pour comprendre l’acces et l’usage des ressources par les populations locales.
The in vitro and in vivo development of goat embryos produced by intracytoplasmic sperm injection using tail-cut spermatozoa

The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of a novel intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) procedure, as well as the in vitro and in vivo developmental competence of goat embryos produced by ICSI. Oocyte-cumulus complexes recovered by LOPU from donors stimulated with gonadotrophins were matured in vitro. Fresh goat semen was used for ICSI following Percoll gradient washing. Tail-cut spermatozoa were microinjected into the ooplasm of goat oocytes using a piezo micropipette-driving system (PiezoDrill). In order to assess developmental competence, the ICSI-derived zygotes were cultured in one of two media systems (mTALP-mKSOM vs G1.3-G2.3) for in vitro development or were transferred into recipients for full-term development. The results suggest that cutting sperm tails using the oocyte-holding pipette coupled with the PiezoDrill is an efficient approach for goat ICSI in terms of oocyte survival, pronuclear development and initial cleavage. The mTALP-mKSOM culture system was more suitable for in vitro development of ICSI-derived goat embryos than G1.3-G2.3. This first report of full-term development of an ICSI-derived goat embryo suggests that ICSI can be applied to assisted reproduction in goats.
Experience, Service Operations Strategy, and Services as Destinations: Foundations and Exploratory Investigation

This paper explores the customer experience paradigm as it pertains to service operations strategy and design. First, we operationally define and discuss the concept of customer experience. In this context, we propose a reframing of the strategic role of operations strategy as one of choreographing experience‐centric services. We then introduce the concept of services as destinations as an emerging business model for classifying experiential service strategies. Our conceptual typology of experience‐based strategies uses two dimensions: (1) the depth of use of experience as a source of value creation, ranging from brand experience to the services as a destinations business model, and (2) the degree of integration of experience internally within the firm. Using this conceptual typology, we develop five propositions and use multiple cases to illustrate firms' use of these experience strategies. Laying the groundwork for future research, we highlight insights from the qualitative, multiple‐case data as they pertain to service operations strategy and the business model that employs services as destinations. A number of questions for further research are suggested.
Big City, Big Turnout? Electoral Participation in American Cities

ABSTRACT: This article seeks to describe and explain variation in voter turnout in American big city municipal elections using data from 332 mayoral elections in 38 large U.S. cities over 25 years. In my cross-sectional time-series analysis of turnout in mayoral elections, I find that city-level demographic factors are only weakly correlated with turnout. By contrast, institutional and campaign factors explain much of the variation. The effect of Progressive era reforms on depressing turnout is greatest in the most competitive elections. I conclude by discussing the implication of the overall downward trend in turnout and changes cities can make to increase participation.
Cross-Country Growth Regressions

A large literature has identified a variety of "ancillary variables", such as political instability, income distribution, and financial development as important determinants of income growth in cross-sectional studies. This leaves open the question of whether these variables influence growth through their effect on rates of factor accumulation or their influence on total factor productivity growth. This paper addressses this question by examining whether "primitives", or rates of factor accumulation, are sufficient statistics for economic growth, and whether the ancillary variables found in the literature do enter in the determination of physical and human capital accumulation rates.
Size Really Matters: Further Evidence on the Negative Relationship between Board Size and Firm Value

This study examines the impact of corporate governance mechanisms of Singapore and Malaysian firms on the Tobin's Q of these firms. We find little evidence of relationships between most corporate governance mechanisms and Tobin's Q. However, consistent with Yermack (1996) and Eisenberg et al. (1998), we find that there is an inverse relationship between board size and Tobin's Q in both countries. This suggests that the negative relationship between board size and firm value transcends different corporate governance systems.
The Geometric Block Model

To capture the inherent geometric features of many community detection problems, we propose to use a new random graph model of communities that we call a Geometric Block Model. The geometric block model generalizes the random geometric graphs in the same way that the well-studied stochastic block model generalizes the Erdös-Renyi random graphs. It is also a natural extension of random community models inspired by the recent theoretical and practical advancement in community detection. While being a topic of fundamental theoretical interest, our main contribution is to show that many practical community structures are better explained by the geometric block model. We also show that a simple triangle-counting algorithm to detect communities in the geometric block model is near-optimal. Indeed, even in the regime where the average degree of the graph grows only logarithmically with the number of vertices (sparse-graph), we show that this algorithm performs extremely well, both theoretically and practically. In contrast, the triangle-counting algorithm is far from being optimum for the stochastic block model. We simulate our results on both real and synthetic datasets to show superior performance of both the new model as well as our algorithm.
Distribution of OX2 antigen and OX2 receptor within retina.

PURPOSE OX2 is a member of the immunoglobulin superfamily expressed on a broad range of tissues including neurons of the central and peripheral nervous systems, thymocytes, and endothelium. The recently identified OX2 receptor (OX2R) is restricted to the surfaces of myeloid lineage cells, including microglia. Functional data have implicated the OX2-OX2R interaction as a myeloid downregulatory signal. The purpose of this study was to determine the distribution and extent of expression of OX2 and its receptor within the retina, a tissue developed to restrain immune-mediated inflammatory damage. METHODS OX2 and OX2R monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) were used to determine OX2 and OX2R protein expression, respectively, by flow cytometry of isolated myeloid-derived cells from normal and inflamed rat retina and by immunohistochemistry of serial sections of rat retina. For comparison, distribution of OX2 was documented using species-specific monoclonal antibodies in mouse and human retina. No OX2R mAbs are available for mouse or human detection. RESULTS OX2 was expressed on retinal vascular endothelium and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)-negative neurons in retina and optic nerve and on a subpopulation of CD45(+) perivascular and juxtavascular cells. Within normal retina, OX2R was not detected on myeloid-derived cells. During experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis (EAU), expression of both OX2 and OX2R was noted on infiltrating leukocytes. CONCLUSIONS Taking these results of the distribution of OX2 in normal and OX2R in inflamed retina with other functional data of OX2-OX2R interaction, it is suggested that the OX2-OX2R interaction has the potential to contribute to a novel pathway that suppresses and limits immunologic inflammatory damage within the retina.
DNA Demethylating Agents and Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors in Hematologic Malignancies

The pivotal role of aberrant promoter methylation in gene silencing and cancer development has fueled the interest in DNA methyltransferase inhibitors as novel anticancer drugs. Modulation of gene expression through targeting of epigenetic marks is one of the emerging and promising strategies that has demonstrated successful clinical outcome in hematologic malignancies. Epigenetic modifiers, including DNA methyltransferase inhibitors and histone deacetylase inhibitors, have demonstrated significant clinical activity; several are or are likely to soon be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, the exact mechanism of the clinical response achieved is not fully understood. This review focuses on the pharmacology of the known DNA methyltransferase and histone deacetylase inhibitors and their potential as promising anticancer drugs.
Analyzing the Efficiency of Pair Programming in Education

Pair programming has been widely implemented in education because of the benefits it brings to fresh students in university. However, the efficiency of implementing pair programming in education is affected by many factors. This research investigates the most common factors which influence pair programming effectively and gives recommendations to teachers implementing pair programming in an efficiency way. Based on a systematic literature review and semi-structured interviews with 5 students, we investigate the most common benefits and factors of pair programming in education. As a consequence of our findings, we propose the "full pair programming process" to improve the quality of pair programming implementation.
Herbicide resistance and the adoption of integrated weed management by Western Australian grain growers

Extension programs to encourage farmers to reduce reliance on herbicides by adopting integrated weed management (IWM) practices have met with limited success. Studies aiming to understand the factors that influence farmers' choices of integrated control practices have faced difficulties in variable specification, and have not achieved high explanatory power. Using data from grain growers in Western Australia, where herbicide resistance in major crop weeds is common, this study tests the applicability of a framework for the IWM adoption decision in which herbicide efficacy is assumed to be a potentially exhaustible resource. Farmers' perceptions of multiple techniques and other variables are aggregated using principal components, and used in logistic regressions to explain the intensity of use of IWM practices. Eighty-six percent of growers were correctly classified according to use of multiple IWM practices. Herbicide resistance and expectations of the future availability of effective new herbicides were significant in explaining IWM adoption. IWM adoption and herbicide-resistance management are shown to be information-intensive and involving an intertemporal resource management decision. Copyright 2007 International Association of Agricultural Economists.
Testing for Aggregation Bias in Linear Models

This paper discusses alternative methods of testing for aggregation bias and proposes direct tests of the discrepancy of the macroparameters from the average of the corresponding microparameters, and derives tests of aggregation bias in the general case where the parameters of interest may possibly be nonlinear functions of the microparameters. The paper also develops a Durbin-Hausman type misspecification test of the disaggregate model. These tests are then applied to disaggregate and aggregate specifications of employment functions for the U.K. economy disaggregated by forty industries. Copyright 1990 by Royal Economic Society.
Estimation and Impact of Gender Differences in Risk Tolerance

This paper provides numerical estimates of the distributions of risk tolerance for men and women. A simple model of individual portfolio choice is calibrated to data on Individual Retirement Accounts from the Health and Retirement Study to obtain the estimates. Results show that women tend to be less risk-tolerant than men. The estimates are then used to measure the impact of risk tolerance on wealth accumulation. Simulations show that the difference in risk tolerance can account for around 10% of the gender difference in accumulated wealth.
Metabolic Profiling of Hearts Exposed to Sevoflurane and Propofol Reveals Distinct Regulation of Fatty Acid and Glucose Oxidation: CD36 and Pyruvate Dehydrogenase as Key Regulators in Anesthetic-induced Fuel Shift

Background:Myocardial energy metabolism is a strong predictor of postoperative cardiac function. This study profiled the metabolites and metabolic changes in the myocardium exposed to sevoflurane, propofol, and Intralipid and investigated the underlying molecular mechanisms. Methods:Sevoflurane (2 vol%) and propofol (10 and 100 &mgr;m) in the formulation of 1% Diprivan® (AstraZeneca Inc., Mississauga, ON, Canada) were compared for their effects on oxidative energy metabolism and contractility in the isolated working rat heart model. Intralipid served as a control. Substrate flux through the major pathways for adenosine triphosphate generation in the heart, that is, fatty acid and glucose oxidation, was measured using [3H]palmitate and [14C]glucose. Biochemical analyses of nucleotides, acyl-CoAs, ceramides, and 32 acylcarnitine species were used to profile individual metabolites. Lipid rafts were isolated and used for Western blotting of the plasma membrane transporters CD36 and glucose transporter 4. Results:Metabolic profiling of the hearts exposed to sevoflurane and propofol revealed distinct regulation of fatty acid and glucose oxidation. Sevoflurane selectively decreased fatty acid oxidation, which was closely related to a marked reduction in left ventricular work. In contrast, propofol at 100 &mgr;m but not 10 &mgr;m increased glucose oxidation without affecting cardiac work. Sevoflurane decreased fatty acid transporter CD36 in lipid rafts/caveolae, whereas high propofol increased pyruvate dehydrogenase activity without affecting glucose transporter 4, providing mechanisms for the fuel shifts in energy metabolism. Propofol increased ceramide formation, and Intralipid increased hydroxy acylcarnitine species. Conclusions:Anesthetics and their solvents elicit distinct metabolic profiles in the myocardium, which may have clinical implications for the already jeopardized diseased heart.
Norms- and Control-Based Governance of International Manufacturer–Distributor Relational Exchanges

This study contributes to an understanding of plural forms of governance by integrating research on norms-based and control-based mechanisms in managing interorganizational relationships. The authors develop a model of structural antecedents and performance consequences of these two distinct governance forms. Based on data from 129 relationships between U.S. manufacturers and foreign-based independent distributors, the empirical results show a differential effect of relationship structures on the use of control-based and norms-based governance. Furthermore, the results show that these governance forms have distinct performance implications, and the nature of their influence on the effectiveness of the relationship varies by the environmental uncertainty in the foreign markets.