Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tax Incentives and Charitable Contributions: The Evidence from Censored Quantile Regression

This paper investigates the relationship between tax price and charitable contributions using the censored quantile regression (QR) technique, which can provide a complete description of the whole distribution of giving, and data from US Internal Revenue Service individual tax returns. The findings of the present study are as follows. First, the price elasticities of charitable contributions are all negative and consistently decrease in absolute value along the quantiles. Second, donors at lower giving quantiles are price elastic but donors at higher quantiles are price inelastic. Third, the income elasticities are positive and increase along the quantiles. Lastly, the effects of wealth, age, marital status, and the number of dependents vary across quantiles. All the empirical results show that the censored QR offers better explanations on the relationship between tax incentives and charitable contributions.
‘Masterstroke: a pilot group stroke prevention program for community dwelling stroke survivors’

Objectives: To explore whether a pilot secondary stroke prevention group program for community-dwelling chronic stroke survivors assisted participants in modifying their lifestyle to reduce their risk of secondary stroke. Design: A mixed methods study (quantitative and qualitative). Setting: Community. Subjects: Twenty-two community dwelling, chronic stroke survivors. Intervention: The Masterstroke program incorporated a secondary prevention stroke group program over a 9-week period with two 2-h sessions weekly (1 hour for education and 1 hour for exercise). The exercise component incorporated fitness, strength, mobility and balance and education focused on secondary stroke prevention whilst also providing chronic condition self-management support. Main measures: Timed Up and Go (TUG), Six Minute Walk Test (6MWT), Fat and Fibre Barometer, The Stroke and Aphasia Quality of Life Scale (SaQoL-39), and questionnaires for salt intake and stroke knowledge. Qualitative outcomes were participants’ perceptions. Data analysis involved an inductive thematic approach with constant comparison. Results: There were insufficient participants for results to reach statistical significance in all categories, however, statistically significant results where achieved with regards to knowledge, TUG, salt intake and quality of life (QoL) scores. Qualitative responses explored participants’ experience of the Masterstroke program; results confirmed increases in knowledge about stroke and exercise tolerance, successfulness of a group program and lifestyle modification post stroke. Conclusions: Participation in the Masterstroke program for community dwelling stroke survivors resulted in significant improvements in knowledge, functional balance, dietary behaviours and quality of life. Qualitative interviews support the participants’ implementation of lifestyle changes essential for reducing risks of secondary stroke. Results support the utilisation of this model and warrants rigorous investigation regarding long-term impacts of an education and exercise program on community dwelling stroke survivors. Implications for Rehabilitation A program which incorporates exercise and education in a group setting may improve health-related quality of life and functional performance for community dwelling, chronic stroke survivors. It is feasible for a multidisciplinary team to implement a secondary stroke prevention group program for community dwelling, chronic stroke survivors.
Reporting and reflecting on corporate social responsibility in the hospitality industry: a case study of pub operators in the UK.

Purpose – This paper aims to offer a preliminary case study exploration of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues being addressed and reported by the UK's top ten pub operators.Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins with a short discussion of the characteristics and origins of CSR and this is followed by a brief outline of pubs and pub operators within the UK. The paper draws its empirical material from the CSR reports and information posted on the worldwide web by the leading pub operators.Findings – The findings reveal that each of the leading operators has its own approach to CSR and that there are substantial variations in the nature and the extent of reporting. More specifically the paper focuses upon four sets of CSR issues namely those relating to the marketplace; the workplace; the environment; and the community and then provides some reflections on the commitment to these issues at both corporate and individual pub levels.Research implications/limitations – CSR in the pub sector.
Favorable Selection with Asymmetric Information

In his well-known "lemons" paper, Akerlof [1970] shows that when sellers know more about the quality of their product than the buyers do, adverse selection is likely to result. His argument may be put as follows: Let x be the money-value of the utility that the seller gets from owning (one unit of) a good. The goods all look alike to the buyers, so they all sell at the same price. Let w be this price. But then the sellers for whom x > w will withdraw from the market, leaving behind only those for whom x w represents adverse selection from the point of view of the buyers because the high-quality cars are selected out of the market. Wilson's generalization of Akerlofs model has the same property [Wilson, 1980]. The basic reason is that in the population of used cars, utilities of buyers and of sellers are positively correlated because of the hierarchical nature of automobile quality. Applications of the adverse selection model to the labor market [Greenwald, 1979; Stiglitz, 1976; Weiss, 1980] also assume that labor quality (productivity) is hierarchical: if one worker is better at task X than another, then he is also better at task Y. The consequence is that adverse selection prevails in markets where workers' productivities are not observable. The present paper shows that once one abandons the assumption of hierarchical quality, the presence of uncertainty and asymmetric information may result in favorable selection rather than adverse selection. This point is made within the context of an elaboration of Roy's [1951] model of comparative advantage in the labor market. The model is presented in Section II, and the equilibrium is discussed in Section III. A favorable selection equilibrium is radically different from an
Innovation, entrepreneurship and economic growth

– The main aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between innovation and economic growth, following the Schumpeter approach, considering the entrepreneurship activity. , – Several hypotheses are tested considering three equations, for the case of ten developed countries. To estimate the equations, generalized least square (GLS)‐cross‐section weights and panel least squares methodologies for the period 2001‐2009 have been used. , – Innovation plays a central role in the economic growth process and the entrepreneur is the vehicle to introduce the new technologies to improve the firms' activity and to obtain higher profits. It is also necessary to include in this process other variables: social climate and the role of institutions. , – Some measures can design from these results to improve innovation and entrepreneurship activity, which would have positive effects on economic growth. , – Schumpeterian approach is developed for this analysis, and empirical estimations are carried out to test hypotheses on economic growth and innovation, considering not only the traditional quantitative variables but also qualitative ones, having a wider view about the process. Drucker statement on innovation effects on entrepreneurship activity is also tested.
Quality of Life and Disability Weights Associated with Periodontal Disease

Burden-of-oral-disease studies have been hampered by lack of data on disability weights. It is likely that disability weights will vary between conditions such as gingivitis and periodontal pockets. The aims of this study were to assess health-related quality of life and disability weights for periodontal conditions. A random sample of 45- to 54-year-olds was surveyed during 2004-05 (n = 879, response rate = 43.8%), with oral examinations on n = 709 persons (completion rate = 80.7%). Oral disease symptoms were recorded by the EuroQol, from which disability weights were calculated. Reported pain/discomfort ranged from 6.1% of persons (gingivitis) to 25.8% of persons (6+ mm pockets). Lower disability weights were associated with gingivitis (0.001) and 6+ mm gingival recession (0.004), with higher weights for 6+ mm loss of attachment (0.012) and 6+ mm pocket depth (0.018). Variation in symptom experience indicated the need for investigators to identify periodontal conditions and apply appropriate disability weights in burden-of-disease studies.
Predicting image caption by a unified hierarchical model

Automatically describing the content of an image is a challenging task in artificial intelligence. The difficulty is particularly pronounced in activity recognition and the image caption revealed by the relationship analysis of the activities involved in the image. This paper presents a unified hierarchical model to model the interaction activity between human and nearby object, and then speculates the image content by analyzing the logical relationship among the interaction activities. In our model, the first-layer factored three-way interaction machine models the 3D spatial context between human and the relevant object to straightly aid the prediction of human-object interaction activities. Then, the activities are further processed through the top-layer factored three-way interaction machine to learn the image content with the help of 3D spatial context among the activities. Experiments on joint dataset show that our unified hierarchical model outperforms state-of-the-arts in predicting human-object interaction activities and describing the image caption.
Violent Conflict and Online Segregation: An Analysis of Social Network Communication Across Ukraine's Regions

Does the intensity of a social conflict affect political division? Traditionally, social cleavages are seen as the underlying cause of political conflicts. It is clear, however, that a violent conflict itself can shape partisan, social, and national identities. In this paper, we ask whether social conflicts unite or divide the society by studying the effects of Ukraine's military conflict with Russia on online social ties between Ukrainian provinces (oblasts). In order to do that, we collected original data on the cross-regional structure of politically relevant online communication among users of VKontakte social networking site. We analyze the panel of provinces spanning the most active phases of domestic protests and military conflict and isolate the effects of province-specific war casualties on the nature of inter-provincial online communication. The results show that war casualties entice strong emotional response in the corresponding provinces, but do not necessarily increase the level of social cohesion in inter-provincial online communication. We find that the intensity of military conflict entices online activism, but activates regional rather than nation-wide network connections. We also find that military conflict tends to polarize some regions of Ukraine, especially in the East. Our research brings attention to the underexplored areas in the study of civil conflict and political identities by documenting the ways the former may affect the latter.
The Impact of Caller Gender on Telephone Crisis-Helpline Workers’ Interpretation of Suicidality in Caller Vignettes

Telephone crisis-line workers (TCWs) are trained in a variety of techniques and skills to facilitate the identification of suicidal callers. One factor that may influence the implementation of these skills is gender. This study used an experimental design to explore whether helpline callers being identified as male or female is associated with TCWs’ ratings of callers’ potential for suicide risk and TCWs’ intention to use support- or intervention-oriented skills with callers. Data were collected using an online self-report survey in an Australian sample of 133 TCWs. The results suggest that under some circumstances the callers’ gender might influence TCWs’ intention to use intervention-oriented skills with the caller. Implications for the training of telephone crisis workers, and those trained in suicide prevention more broadly are discussed.
Is there a correlation between knowledge management maturity and organizational performance

Purpose – Beyond critique of current maturity models, the research literature has neglected to supply empirical evidence of the value knowledge management (KM) holds for organizations. The majority of studies, in common with other emergent business philosophies, are focused on large organizations of developed economies, where readily available implementation resources are an underlying assumption. This paper aims to address this issue and to assess the correlation between the successful institutionalization of KM and organizational performance (OP) in a developing economy.Design/methodology/approach – From a large urban South African university engaged in numerous collaboration programs with industry, the authors gained insight into KM maturity and organizational performance (OP) of three industry groups, over a five‐year period. The authors apply an inventory developed by Kruger and Snyman to a set of nine organisations distributed over three economic sectors in South Africa.Findings – By evaluating the .
Collaborative Mapping and Autonomous Parking for Multi-Story Parking Garage

We present a novel collaborative mapping and autonomous parking system for semi-structured multi-story parking garages, based on cooperative 3-D LiDAR point cloud registration and Bayesian probabilistic updating. First, an inertial-enhanced (IE) generalized iterative closest point (G-ICP) approach is presented to perform high accuracy registration for LiDAR odometry, which is loosely coupled with inertial measurement unit using multi-state extended Kalman filter fusion. Second, the IE G-ICP is utilized to reconstruct the 3-D point cloud model for each vehicle, and then the individual model maps are merged and updated into a global probabilistic 2-D grid map. A collaborative multiple layer semantic map is constructed to support autonomous parking. Finally, we propose a collaborative navigation approach for path planning when there are multiple vehicles in the parking garage through vehicle-to-vehicle communication. A global path planner is designed to explore the minimum cost path based on the semantic map, and local motion planning is performed using a random exploring algorithm for obstacle avoidance and path smoothing. Our pilot experimental evaluation provides a proof of concept for indoor autonomous parking by collaborative perception, map merging, and updating methodologies.
Reasons for Living in a Transit-Oriented Development, and Associated Transit Use

Abstract Cities and regions throughout the U.S. are promoting transit-oriented development (TOD) near rail stations to increase both transit use and the number and range of housing opportunities. This paper reports the results of a survey of households who moved to TODs within the last 5 years, finding a wide range of motivations. Only about one-third of respondents reported access to transit as one of the top three reasons for choosing to live in a TOD. They were equally or more likely to cite lower housing cost or the quality of the neighborhood. Those who reported that their choice of residence location was motivated in part by access to transit were more likely to use transit than those who did not.
Effect of Preconditioning and Soldering on Failures of Chip Tantalum Capacitors

Soldering of molded case tantalum capacitors can result in damage to Ta205 dielectric and first turn-on failures due to thermo-mechanical stresses caused by CTE mismatch between materials used in the capacitors. It is also known that presence of moisture might cause damage to plastic cases due to the pop-corning effect. However, there are only scarce literature data on the effect of moisture content on the probability of post-soldering electrical failures. In this work, that is based on a case history, different groups of similar types of CWR tantalum capacitors from two lots were prepared for soldering by bake, moisture saturation, and longterm storage at room conditions. Results of the testing showed that both factors: initial quality of the lot, and preconditioning affect the probability of failures. Baking before soldering was shown to be effective to prevent failures even in lots susceptible to pop-corning damage. Mechanism of failures is discussed and recommendations for pre-soldering bake are suggested based on analysis of moisture characteristics of materials used in the capacitors' design.
The Role of Fathers in Children's Lives: A View from Urban India

he perceptions and practices associated with fathering are changing rapidly in India. Traditional Indian notions endorsed the father’s role as a provider, protector, teacher, and moral guardian to children (Kane, 1974; Krishnan, T 1998). Within the patriarchal family system in India, everyday care of young children remained primarily the mother’s responsibility. Fathers maintained a distant, authoritative role, rather than an affective one (Kakar, 1981). After revisiting earlier writings, Roopnaraine and Suppal (2003) conclude that Indian fathers are more centrally involved and capable of responding to children than previously asserted. With more middle-class women entering the workforce and the Indian constitution and worldwide media promoting gender equality, the demand for a man who has the knowledge, attitude, and skills to share co-parenting responsibilities is growing in dualearner families (Bharat, 2002; Datta & Maheshwari, 1997; Rajadhyaksha & Smita, 2004). Children and women now have higher expectations of men in terms of warmth, as a focal point in parents’ lives. Parents, particularly in the middle class, are extremely concerned about ensuring a successful and secure future for their children, with an eye toward upward mobility in a globally competitive society. They are extremely conscious of their parental role to ensure the best for their children (Datta, 2007; Gore, 2003; Sinha, 2003; Sriram, 2003). Therefore, there is much pressure and demand on positive participation of medfathers in all aspects of family life. This article presents an overview of the nature and extent of fathers’ involvement in their children’s lives in middle-class families, drawing from published work and integration of presentations and graduate research projects. It further highlights a few voluntary initiatives undertaken to promote fathers’ involvement, in the absence of strong policy directives or large-scale programs for father involvement. The article concludes with practical suggestions for teachers and practitioners to promote father involvement in the school system in multiple ways.
Pygopus Maintains Heart Function in Aging Drosophila Independently of Canonical Wnt Signaling

Background—Heart function declines with age, but the genetic factors underlying such deterioration are largely unknown. Wnt signaling is known to play a role in heart development, but it has not been shown to be important in adult heart function. We have investigated the nuclear adapter protein encoded by pygopus (pygo), which mediates canonical Wnt signaling, for roles in aging-related cardiac dysfunction. Methods and Results—Using the Drosophila heart model, we show that cardiac-specific pygo knockdown in adult flies causes a significant (4- to 5-fold) increase in cardiac arrhythmias (P<0.001) that worsened with age and caused a significant decrease in contractility (−54%; P<0.001) with systolic dysfunction. Immunohistochemistry revealed structural abnormalities that worsened with age, and both functional and morphological alterations were ameliorated by pygo overexpression. Unexpectedly, knockdown of 2 other Wnt signaling components, &bgr;-cat/armadillo or TCF/pangolin, had relatively milder effects on cardiac function. Double-heterozygous combinations of mutants for pygo and canonical Wnt signaling components had no additional effect on heart function over pygo heterozygotes alone. However, double knockdown of pygo and Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II caused additional arrhythmia compared with pygo knockdown alone, suggesting that some of the effects of pygo are mediated by Ca2+ signaling. In the isoproterenol-induced hypertrophic mouse model, we show that Pygo1 protein levels are increased. Conclusions—Our data indicate that Pygo plays a critical role in adult heart function that is Wnt signaling independent and is likely conserved in mammals.
The Madoff Scandal, Market Regulatory Failure, and the Business Education of Lawyers

This essay suggests that a deficiency in legal education is a contributing cause of the regulatory failure. The most scandalous malfeasance of this new era, the Madoff Ponzi scheme, evinces the failure of improperly trained lawyers and regulators. It also calls into question whether the prevailing regulatory philosophy of disclosure of disclosure is sufficient in a complex market. This essay answers an important question underlying these considerations: What can legal education do to better train business lawyers and regulators for a market that is becoming more complex‘ One answer, it suggests, is a simple one: law schools should teach a little more business and a little less law.
Detection of Visual Field Loss in Pituitary Disease: Peripheral Kinetic Versus Central Static

Abstract Visual field assessment is an important clinical evaluation for eye disease and neurological injury. We evaluated Octopus semi-automated kinetic peripheral perimetry (SKP) and Humphrey static automated central perimetry for detection of neurological visual field loss in patients with pituitary disease. We carried out a prospective cross-sectional diagnostic accuracy study comparing Humphrey central 30-2 SITA threshold programme with a screening protocol for SKP on Octopus perimetry. Humphrey 24-2 data were extracted from 30-2 results. Results were independently graded for presence/absence of field defect plus severity of defect. Fifty patients (100 eyes) were recruited (25 males and 25 females), with mean age of 52.4 years (SD = 15.7). Order of perimeter assessment (Humphrey/Octopus first) and order of eye tested (right/left first) were randomised. The 30-2 programme detected visual field loss in 85%, the 24-2 programme in 80%, and the Octopus combined kinetic/static strategy in 100% of eyes. Peripheral visual field loss was missed by central threshold assessment. Qualitative comparison of type of visual field defect demonstrated a match between Humphrey and Octopus results in 58%, with a match for severity of defect in 50%. Tests duration was 9.34 minutes (SD = 2.02) for Humphrey 30-2 versus 10.79 minutes (SD = 4.06) for Octopus perimetry. Octopus semi-automated kinetic perimetry was found to be superior to central static testing for detection of pituitary disease-related visual field loss. Where reliant on Humphrey central static perimetry, the 30-2 programme is recommended over the 24-2 programme. Where kinetic perimetry is available, this is preferable to central static programmes for increased detection of peripheral visual field loss.