Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Nueva Evidencia sobre la Eficiencia de la Banca Colombiana: Una medición con modelos de frontera no-paramétricos (New Evidence on the Efficiency of the Colombian Banks: An Evaluation with Non-Parametric Frontier Models)

Spanish Abstract: En este documento se evalua la eficiencia de la banca colombiana durante el periodo 2000-2009 utilizando el metodo no-parametrico de analisis envolvente de datos (DEA). Bajo el enfoque de intermediacion financiera, se estimaron medidas de eficiencia tecnica, de escala, y en costos empleando una aproximacion global y otra por ventanas de tiempo. Se realizo un analisis inter-temporal del cambio en productividad mediante el calculo del indice de Malmquist. Los resultados muestran que durante el periodo de estudio la industria bancaria presento un incremento gradual en su eficiencia ubicandose en niveles cercanos al 80% en promedio, aunque con una elevada dispersion entre las entidades. En 2008 se presento una caida generalizada en las medidas de eficiencia asociada al impacto sistemico de la crisis financiera internacional. Sin embargo, a partir de 2009 se observo una rapida recuperacion en las medidas de eficiencia a excepcion de la eficiencia en costos, lo que se explica en parte por la inflexibilidad en los costos laborales. Asimismo, se encontro evidencia a favor del incremento en la eficiencia tecnica de las entidades que efectuaron fusiones y adquisiciones durante el periodo. English Abstract: In this paper we evaluate the efficiency of the Colombian banking sector during the period 2000-2009 by using the non-parametric frontier method (DEA). Under the financial intermediation approach we estimate technical, scale and cost efficiency measures by applying both global and time-windows approximations. Likewise, we compute the Malmquist productivity change index to identify evidence on technological changes and/or gains in efficiency during the period. Results show that banks exhibited a gradual increase in the efficiency measures of around 0.80 in average whit a large dispersion among the banks, and a positive productivity change of 3.9 mostly explained by a technological change that improves the banking industry. In 2008 bank efficiency and productivity measures showed an abrupt fall as a consequence of the increasing financial uncertainty derived from the global financial crisis. However, since 2009 a rapid recovery in most of the efficiency and productivity measures was observed, excluding cost efficiency which may be associated to the rigid labor cost. We also found evidence in favor of efficiency gains after M&A among banks. This suggests that to improve the efficiency of the banking system regulators also should take into account the positive impact from the M&A among banks.
Treatment Response in Kawasaki Disease Is Associated with Sialylation Levels of Endogenous but Not Therapeutic Intravenous Immunoglobulin G

Objectives Although intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is highly effective in Kawasaki disease (KD), mechanisms are not understood and 10-20% of patients are treatment-resistant, manifesting a higher rate of coronary artery aneurysms. Murine models suggest that α2-6-linked sialic acid (α2-6Sia) content of IVIG is critical for suppressing inflammation. However, pro-inflammatory states also up-regulate endogenous levels of β-galactoside:α2-6 sialyltransferase-I (ST6Gal-I), the enzyme that catalyzes addition of α2-6Sias to N-glycans. We asked whether IVIG failures correlated with levels of α2-6Sia on infused IVIG or on the patient’s own endogenous IgG. Methods We quantified levels of α2-6Sia in infused IVIG and endogenous IgG from 10 IVIG-responsive and 10 resistant KD subjects using multiple approaches. Transcript levels of ST6GAL1, in patient whole blood and B cell lines were evaluated by RT-PCR. Plasma soluble (s)ST6Gal-I levels were measured by ELISA. Results There was no consistent difference in median sialylation levels of infused IVIG between groups. However, α2-6Sia levels in endogenous IgG, ST6GAL1 transcript levels, and ST6Gal-I protein in serum from IVIG-resistant KD subjects were lower than in responsive subjects at both pre-treatment and one-year time points (p <0.001, respectively). Conclusions Our data indicate sialylation levels of therapeutic IVIG are unrelated to treatment response in KD. Rather, lower sialylation of endogenous IgG and lower blood levels of ST6GALI mRNA and ST6Gal-I enzyme predict therapy resistance. These differences were stable over time, suggesting a genetic basis. Because IVIG-resistance increases risk of coronary artery aneurysms, our findings have important implications for the identification and treatment of such individuals.
A Multipatch Malaria Model with Logistic Growth Populations

In this paper, we propose a multi-patch model to study the effects of population dispersal on the spatial spread of malaria between patches. The basic reproduction number [Formula: see text] is derived and it is shown that the disease-free equilibrium is locally asymptotically stable if [Formula: see text] and unstable if [Formula: see text]. Bounds on the disease-free equilibrium and [Formula: see text] are given. A sufficient condition for the existence of an endemic equilibrium when [Formula: see text] is obtained. For the two-patch submodel, the dependence of [Formula: see text] on the movement of exposed, infectious, and recovered humans between the two patches is investigated. Numerical simulations indicate that travel can help the disease to become endemic in both patches, even though the disease dies out in each isolated patch. However, if travel rates are continuously increased, the disease may die out again in both patches.
On some nonstationary, nonlinear random processes and their stationary approximations

In this paper our object is to show that a certain class of nonstationary random processes can locally be approximated by stationary processes. The class of processes we are considering includes the time-varying autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic and generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic processes, amongst others. The measure of deviation from stationarity can be expressed as a function of a derivative random process. This derivative process inherits many properties common to stationary processes. We also show that the derivative processes obtained here have alpha-mixing properties.
Is job insecurity always bad? The moderating role of job embeddedness in the relationship between job insecurity and job performance

Considering the mixed results of the relationship between job insecurity and job performance, this study investigated the interaction effect of job insecurity and job embeddedness on job performance and examined the mediating role of affective commitment from the perspectives of conservation of resources theory and social exchange theory. A survey of 725 contract employees from two Chinese private manufacturing companies revealed that when employees had high levels of job embeddedness, job insecurity was significantly and positively related to job performance. In contrast, job insecurity was significantly and negatively related to job performance when there were low levels of job embeddedness. Furthermore, the results indicated that affective commitment mediated the interaction effect. The above conclusions not only illustrate the important role of job embeddedness in the relationship between job insecurity and job performance but also provide beneficial ideas and information to organisations and employees for managing job insecurity.
Condition-dependent expression of pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits in guppies

Female choice can impose persistent directional selection on male sexually selected traits, yet such traits often exhibit high levels of phenotypic variation. One explanation for this paradox is that if sexually selected traits are costly, only the fittest males are able to acquire and allocate the resources required for their expression. Furthermore, because male condition is dependent on resource allocation, condition dependence in sexual traits is expected to underlie trade-offs between reproduction and other life-history functions. In this study we test these ideas by experimentally manipulating diet quality (carotenoid levels) and quantity in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a livebearing freshwater fish that is an important model for understanding relationships between pre- and post-copulatory sexually selected traits. Specifically, we test for condition dependence in the expression of pre- and postcopulatory sexual traits (behavior, ornamentation, sperm traits) and determine whether diet manipulation mediates relationships among these traits. Consistent with prior work we found a significant effect of diet quantity on the expression of both pre- and postcopulatory male traits; diet-restricted males performed fewer sexual behaviors and exhibited significant reductions in color ornamentation, sperm quality, sperm number, and sperm length than those fed ad libitum. However, contrary to our expectations, we found no significant effect of carotenoid manipulation on the expression of any of these traits, and no evidence for a trade-off in resource allocation between pre- and postcopulatory episodes of sexual selection. Our results further underscore the sensitivity of behavioral, ornamental, and ejaculate traits to dietary stress, and highlight the important role of condition dependence in maintaining the high variability in male sexual traits.
Value of Autofluorescence Imaging Videobronchoscopy in Detecting Lung Cancers and Precancerous Lesions: A Review

Bronchoscopy technology is a desirable method for detecting lung cancers arising in the central airways. Most early cancers and precancerous lesions are not visible on conventional white-light bronchoscopy (WLB). Autofluorescence bronchoscopy (AFB) is a newly developed technology that exploits the difference in autofluorescence intensity between normal and tumorous tissues to detect bronchial cancers and precancerous lesions. Several types of AFB systems have been used in clinical practice, and autofluorescence imaging videobronchoscopy (AFI) is one of these AFBs. In most of the studies on AFB other than AFI, AFB has provided a much higher sensitivity but a lower specificity than WLB. Regarding AFI, recent studies have reported controversial results on the sensitivity and specificity for detecting cancers and precancerous lesions, compared with WLB. In this paper we describe the working mechanisms and characteristics of AFBs, mainly AFI, and the diagnostic performance of AFI, compared with WLB, other AFBs, and narrow-band imaging, for detecting lung cancers and precancerous lesions.
Employment, Wages, and Religious Revivals in Postcommunist Countries

The fall of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has profoundly changed the religious landscape in many countries. Sociologists have studied the rise and decline of religious beliefs and participation in the post-communist region, but economic approaches have been rare. This article suggests supplementing the dominant theories—the demand-side explanation of secularization and the supply-side explanation of religious revivals—with a model of individual time allocation. The model presented in the article predicts both the initial growth and the subsequent decline of religious participation in postcommunist countries. The empirical portion of the article focuses on six central European countries with different levels of religiosity. Data from the three waves of the ISSP survey support the model.
Welfare regimes and the experience of unemployment in Europe

1. The Experience of Unemployment in Europe: The Debate PART 1: UNEMPLOYMENT AND POVERTY 2. Unemployment and Poverty: Change over Time 3. Poverty and Financial Hardship among the Unemployed 4. Unemployment and Income Packaging among European Youth 5. The Changing Effects of Social Protection on Poverty PART 2: UNEMPLOYMENT AND LABOUR MARKET MARGINALISATION 6. Unemployment, Gender and Attitudes to Work 7. The Permanent Effects of Labour Market Entry in Times of High Unemployment 8. Unemployment and Cumulative Disadvantage in the Labour Market 9. Poverty and the Employment of Lone Mothers 10. Social Capital and Exits from Unemployment 11. Who Exits Unemployment? Institutional Features, Individual Characteristics and Chances of Getting a Job. A Comparison of Britain and Italy PART 3 : UNEMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL INTEGRATION 12. The Effects of Employment Precarity and Unemployment on Social Isolation 13. United in Employment, United in Unemployment? Employment and Unemployment of Couples in the European Union 14. Unemployment and Psychological Well-Being 15. Gender and the Experience of Unemployment 16. Public Attitudes to Unemployment in Different Welfare Regimes CONCLUSION The Social Regulation of Unemployment
Retrospective haplotype clustering methods for detecting haplotypes effects and haplotype-environment interactions

Haplotype based association analysis faces the issues of (a) a large number of degrees of freedom, (b) rare haplotypes, (c) phase missing, and (d) case-control sampling designs. These issues typically reduce power, destabilize inference algorithms, increase complexity and invalidate a number of common assumptions such as that prospective analyses of case-control data can achieve the same statistical efficiency as retrospective analyses. On one hand, previous work has shown that the strategy of clustering haplotypes under the prospective framework can increase the power of haplotype-based association analysis. On the other hand, both theoretical and simulation work have demonstrated that a retrospective framework can be more efficient than a prospective framework under certain conditions. Combining the merits of haplotype clustering and retrospective likelihood framework, this work aims to provide a unified solution to all issues described above. Specifically, we extend the concept of haplotype clustering to the retrospective framework, and generalize the coverage of the clustering approach to allow for global and haplotype-specific testing of both main effects and interaction effects with environment. We derive generalized score statistics to test for haplotype main effects and interaction effects at the global and individual levels. We apply our proposed method to real data from a genetic study of hypertriglyceridemia. Through simulation, we assess the validity of the proposed tests and, where appropriate, compare the power with the power of the retrospective full-dimensional and prospective analyses.
Acupuncture Affects Autonomic and Endocrine but Not Behavioural Responses Induced by Startle in Horses

Startle is a fast response elicited by sudden acoustic, tactile, or visual stimuli in a variety of animals and in humans. As the magnitude of startle response can be modulated by external and internal variables, it can be a useful tool to study reaction to stress. Our study evaluated whether acupuncture can change cardiac autonomic modulation (heart rate variability); and behavioural (reactivity) and endocrine (cortisol levels) parameters in response to startle. Brazilian Sport horses (n = 6) were subjected to a model of startle in which an umbrella was abruptly opened near the horse. Before startle, the horses were subjected to a 20-minute session of acupuncture in acupoints GV1, HT7, GV20, and BL52 (ACUP) and in nonpoints (NP) or left undisturbed (CTL). For analysis of the heart rate variability, ultrashort-term (64 s) heart rate series were interpolated (4 Hz) and divided into 256-point segments and the spectra integrated into low (LF; 0.01–0.07 Hz; index of sympathetic modulation) and high (HF; 0.07–0.50 Hz; index of parasympathetic modulation) frequency bands. Acupuncture (ACUP) changed the sympathovagal balance with a shift towards parasympathetic modulation, reducing the prompt startle-induced increase in LF/HF and reducing cortisol levels 30 min after startle. However, acupuncture elicited no changes in behavioural parameters.
Seat Belt Usage in Injured Car Occupants: Injury Patterns, Severity and Outcome After Two Main Car Accident Mechanisms in Kashan, Iran, 2012

Background: Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are the main public health problems in Iran. The seat belts, which are vehicle safety devices, are imperative to reduce the risk of severe injuries and mortality. Objectives: The aim of the study was to evaluate injury patterns, severity and outcome among belted and unbelted car occupants who were injured in car accidents. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional prospective study was performed on all car occupants injured in RTAs (n = 822) who were transported to hospital and hospitalized for more than 24 hours from March 2012 to March 2013. Demographic profile of the patients, including age, gender, position in the vehicle, the use of seat belts, type of car crashes, injured body regions, revised trauma score (RTS), Glasgow coma score (GCS), duration of hospital stay and mortality rate were analyzed by descriptive analysis, chi-square and independent t-test. P < 0.05 was considered significant. Results: A total of 560 patients used seat belts (68.1%). The unbelted occupants were younger (28 years vs. 38 years) and had more frequently sustained head, abdomen and multiple injuries (P = 0.01, P = 0.01 and P = 0.009, respectively). Also, these patients had significantly lower GCS and elongated hospitalization and higher death rate (P = 0.001, P = 0.001 and P = 0.05, respectively). Tendency of severe head trauma and low RTS and death were increased in unbelted occupants in car rollover accident mechanisms (P = 0.001, P = 0.01 and P = 0.008, respectively). Conclusions: During car crashes, especially car rollover, unbelted occupants are more likely to sustain multiple severe injuries and death. Law enforcement of the seat belt usage for all occupants (front and rear seat) is obligatory to reduce severe injuries sustained as a result of car accidents, especially in vehicles with low safety.
Paying attention behind the wheel: a framework for studying the role of attention in driving

Driver inattention is thought to cause many automobile crashes. However, the research on attention is fragmented, and the applied research on driving and attention is further split between three largely independent traditions: the experimental research, the differential crash rate research, and the automation research. The goal of this review is to provide a conceptual framework to unify the research—a framework based on the combination of two fundamental dimensions of attentional selection: selection with and without conscious awareness (controlled and automatic), and selection by innate and acquired cognitive mechanisms (exogenous and endogenous). When applied to studies chosen to represent a broad range within the experimental literature, it reveals links between a variety of factors, including inexperience, inebriation, distracting stimuli, heads-up displays, fatigue, rumination, and secondary tasks such as phone conversations. This framework also has clear implications for the differential crash literature and the study of automated systems that support or replace functions of the driver. We conclude that driving research and policy could benefit from consideration of the different modes of attentional selection insofar as they integrate literatures, reveal directions for future research, and predict the effectiveness of interventions for crash-prevention.
Cosmology with negative potentials

We investigate cosmological evolution in models where the effective potential $V(\ensuremath{\varphi})$ may become negative for some values of the field $\ensuremath{\varphi}. $ Phase portraits of such theories in the space of variables $(\ensuremath{\varphi},\stackrel{\ifmmode \dot{}\else \.{}\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\varphi}},H)$ have several qualitatively new features as compared with phase portraits in the theories with $V(\ensuremath{\varphi})g0. $ Cosmological evolution in models with potentials with a ``stable'' minimum at $V(\ensuremath{\varphi})l0$ is similar in some respects to the evolution in models with potentials unbounded from below. Instead of reaching an AdS regime dominated by the negative vacuum energy, the universe reaches a turning point where its energy density vanishes, and then it contracts to a singularity with properties that are practically independent of $V(\ensuremath{\varphi}). $ We apply our methods to investigation of the recently proposed cyclic universe scenario. We show that in addition to the singularity problem there are other problems that need to be resolved in order to realize a cyclic regime in this scenario. We propose several modifications of this scenario and conclude that the best way to improve it is to add a usual stage of inflation after the singularity and use that inflationary stage to generate perturbations in the standard way.
ORIGIN OF THE X-RAYS AND POSSIBLE GeV–TeV EMISSION FROM THE WESTERN HOT SPOT OF PICTOR A

Pictor A is a nearby Fanaroff–Riley class II (FR II) radio galaxy with a bright hot spot, the western hot spot. Observation of high polarization in the optical emission of the hot spot indicates that the optical emission could be synchrotron radiation of relativistic electrons in the hot spot. These electrons may be able to produce high-energy γ-ray photons through inverse Compton scattering. We use single-zone and multizone synchrotron + synchrotron self-Compton models to fit the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) from the radio to the X-ray band of the hot spot. Our results show that in the case of a much weaker magnetic field strength than the equipartition magnetic field, both the single-zone and multizone models can fit the SED, but the multizone model significantly improves the fit. The two models predict the hot spot as a GeV–TeV source, which might be marginally detectable with Fermi/LAT and H.E. S.S. The inverse Compton scattering of cosmic microwave background is also considered, but its contribution to GeV–TeV emission is negligible. Note that under the equipartition condition, the SED can also be fitted with the multizone model, but the predicted flux at >1022 Hz is too weak to be detectable. The detection of TeV γ-rays from this FR II radio galaxy, if confirmed, would establish a new subclass of extragalactic sources in this energy regime since most of the active galactic nuclei detected to date at TeV energies are high-energy-peaked BL Lac objects.
Critical Infrastructures, Resilience and Organisation of Mega-Projects: the Olympic Games

There has been much debate about the incorporation of resilience into critical infrastructures. Whether a piece of infrastructure is critical tends to be a matter of interpretation, however most definitional attempts share a common focus upon highly interdependent supply chains, complex organizational decision structures, communication networks and transport linkages that enable mass social and economic activities. These include traditional network technologies such as communications, energy, water, transport as well as life-essential supply chains, such as food supply or financial transaction and budgeting systems. The significance of discussion of resilience in critical infrastructures is not confined to threats from international terrorism and pandemics. Resilience is integral to day-to-day design and operation of such networks.
A Publication of the Association of Management CHALLENGES OF CROSS-FUNCTIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAMS : A CONCEPTUAL STUDY

The inevitable perspectives and identities in cross-functional software development projects often appear to be problematic. This paper draws upon the extant literature and postulates a conceptual model that explains the major challenges that cross-functionality adds to software development teams. The proposed model adds to the emerging contingency perspective pertaining to the study of conflict in software development teams. It also provides a more nuanced view of the challenges that cross-functionality adds to group settings. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.