Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential effects of two dominant plant species on community structure and invasibility in an old-field ecosystem

Aims In this study, we examined the effects of Solidago altissima (hereafter Solidago) and two species in the genus Verbesina, Verbesina virginica and Verbesina occidentalis (hereafter Verbesina), on the structure of an old-field plant community and establishment by an invasive plant species, Lespedeza cuneata (hereafter Lespedeza). Materials and Methods We removed Solidago, Verbesina and both Solidago and Verbesina from 4-m 2 plots in an intact old-field community during two growing seasons. We then quantified the effects of these removals on richness, evenness, diversity and composition of the subdominant plant community. We also measured the total aboveground biomass and the aboveground biomass of the subdominant community. To assess how these removals affected establishment by Lespedeza ,w e planted 20 seeds in each plot and tracked seedling emergence and survival for one growing season. Important Findings Subdominant community evenness and Shannon diversity were higher in plots from which Solidago and Verbesina were removed relative to control plots. However, there were no effects of dominant species removal on species richness or composition of the subdominant community. Total aboveground biomass was not affected by dominant species removal, suggesting that the community of subdominant species exhibited compensation. In fact, subdominant community biomass was greater when Solidago, but not Verbesina, was removed. Light availability was also greater in plots where Solidago was removed relative to control plots throughout the growing season. In addition, removal of dominant species, in particular Solidago, indirectly reduced the emergence, but not survival, of Lespedeza seedlings by directly promoting subdominant community biomass. Taken together, our results suggest that dominant old-field plant species affect subdominant community structure and indirectly promote establishment by Lespedeza.
Auditors' internal control opinions: do they influence judgments about investments?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of internal control opinions on individuals' judgments about investments. Design/methodology/approach - The approach used is a behavioral experiment where risk assessments and judgments about investments are made for four internal control opinion scenarios. Findings - The results indicate that the type of internal control opinion made no difference for either risk assessments or investment decisions. Research limitations/implications - Participants are provided with data sets that do not contain all of the information they may acquire when they make actual investment decisions. Also, there is a lack of real consequences for making good or poor investment decisions. Practical implications - The type of internal control opinion has no effect on risk assessments or investing intentions. Thus, other considerations apparently dominate internal control opinions when making judgments about investments. Originality/value - This is the first paper to examine whether intentions to invest might be affected by internal control opinions.
Real Wages over the Business Cycle: Evidence from Panel Data

One topic on which Keynes did not disagree with classical economists was the cyclical behavior of real wages. Keynes (1936) as well as various classical writers predicted that real wages should move countercyclically. Quoting the General Theory (p. 17): "in general an increase in employment can only occur through the accompaniment of a decline in real wages. Thus, I am not disputing this vital fact which the classical economists have (rightly) asserted as indefeasible. " This prediction is based on the premise of competition and a given short-run capital stock. Increases in employment then correspond to more intensive use of capital and, through diminishing product, lower real wages. For this reason, evidence by Dunlop (1938) and Tarshis (1939) that real wages move procyclically was viewed as paradoxical. Both Dunlop and Tarshis based their findings on an observed positive correlation between real and money wages, which, given the procyclical movement of money wages, implies a positive correlation between
The Effectiveness of Professional Learning Communities as Perceived by Elementary School Teachers

The Effectiveness of Professional Learning Communities as Perceived by Elementary School Teachers by Quonias Hudson EdS, Walden University, 2012 MA, Central Michigan University, 2008 BS, University of West Georgia, 2007 Doctoral Study Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education
Detecting the Evolution of Deliberate Fertility Control before the Demographic Transition in Germany

This paper studies the evolution of deliberate fertility control in fourteen historic German villages between 1700 and 1900. The fertility response to infant and child mortality and exogenous fluctuations in rye price are used as measures of the existence and extent of deliberate non-parity specific control. The results show that, even before the demographic transition, the breastfeeding effect associated with infant mortality decreases and the replacement effect associated with child mortality increases. A negative fertility response to high rye price is present only after 1800, supporting the existence and evolution of deliberate non-parity specific fertility control before the demographic transition.
Assessing Teacher Self-Efficacy and Job Satisfaction of Early Career Agriculture Teachers in Kentucky.

The United States is currently facing a shortage of qualified teachers; specifically, agricultural education has recorded shortages for several years. A high percentage of agriculture teachers will leave the profession well before retirement. Those teachers who leave the profession are often dissatisfied with their chosen career and exhibit low levels of teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction. The purpose of this census study was to describe the current level of teacher selfefficacy and job satisfaction among all early career agriculture teachers (within the first 6 years in the profession) in Kentucky (N = 80) and to determine if a relationship existed between teacher self-efficacy and job satisfaction among these teachers. Teacher self-efficacy was measured through three constructs: student engagement, instructional practices, and classroom management. Early career agriculture teachers in Kentucky are efficacious and satisfied with teaching. A variety of relationships exist between each construct and overall job satisfaction between each group of teachers.
Supporting the EU With(Out) Political Knowledge: Empirical Evidence from a New Joiner

This article investigates the relationship between political knowledge and trust in the EU among the Romanian citizens between 2002 and 2009. It uses individual level data from the Candidate Countries (2001-2004) and Standard Eurobarometers (2005-2009) to check whether there is a direct linkage between the decreasing level of trust and the increasing level of knowledge in the most Euro- optimist new member state. The statistical analysis reveals that the more citizens know about the EU, the more they trust it. Such a result gains supplementary relevance in the context of decreasing support. Two other general results are relevant for the Romanian case. First, although the level of political knowledge increases as the accession gets closer, it continues to be quite low. Second, the Romanian citizens constantly overestimate their knowledge about the EU.
Teetering on the Rim: Global Restructuring, Daily Life, and the Armed Retreat of the Bolivian State

1. Introduction1 Ruptures2. City of the Future3. Adjusting Poverty4. Miners and the Politics of Revanchism5. School Discipline6. The Military and Daily Life2 Reconfigurations7. Power Lines8. Global Connections9. El Alto, the State, and the Capitalist Imperium
Size matters: risk and scale

Is small beautiful? Human organizations are growing in size and risk. We have created some behemoths, such as China’s People’s Liberation Army with 2.3 million soldiers, Indian Railways with 1.4 million employees or the UK’s National Health Service with 1.3 million employees. More commercial organizations are hefty as well, such as Walmart with 2.1 million employees, HSBC with 330,000, Bank of America with 280,000, or JP Morgan Chase with 220,000. As the number of people on the planet approaches 6.8 billion, is it inevitable that their financial organizations should grow in size as well? One could argue that average family size has even been falling in recent decades. The Credit Scrunch, as we term current financial crises, has brought to the fore the argument that no bank should be “too big to fail. ” No institution should be allowed to become so large that its problems become systemic risking the implosion of important social systems. Anti-monopoly and anti-trust legislation exist to keep size under control. However, it would appear that the legislation is either unenforced or poorly applied when we have some dozen banks controlling global wholesale markets and handfuls of banks in many countries controlling local retail and commercial markets (Mainelli and Giffords, 2009). Without turning into slavish worshippers at the altar of “small is beautiful,” it is interesting to note what a cap on size achieves:
Pricing strategies for resort fees: consumer preferences favor simplicity

Purpose – The purpose of this study is twofold: to determine hotel customers’ preference among hotel amenities pricing strategies, specifically a bundled, all-inclusive charge in the form of a resort fee, a limited choice resort fee at a lower price or a la carte pricing, and to determine whether hotel customer prefer bundled or partitioned pricing when faced with a mandatory resort fee. Design/methodology/approach – An online survey of participants aged 18 years and older who had taken an overnight leisure trip in the past six months is conducted. A fixed-choice set conjoint analysis is performed to analyze the 353 usable surveys. Findings – Results of this conjoint analysis show that 67 per cent of respondents prefer bundled pricing over partitioned pricing. Respondents also show higher utility for no resort fee and paying for amenities based on usage instead of being forced to pay a mandatory resort fee. Practical implications – Guest preferences for pricing strategies can provide hotel operators with .
Real-time reverse transcription PCR analysis of trichloroethylene-regulated toluene dioxygenase expression in Pseudomonas putida F1

Toluene dioxygenase (tod) is a multicomponent enzyme system in Pseudomonas putida F1. Tod can mediate the degradation of Trichloroethylene (TCE), a widespread pollutant. In this study, we try to explore the TCE-regulated tod expression by using real-time qRT-PCR. The minimal culture media were supplemented with glucose, toluene, or a mixture of glucose/toluene respectively as carbon and energy sources. The TCE was injected into each medium after a 12-hour incubation period. The TCE injection severely affected bacterial growth when cultured with toluene or toluene/glucose mixtures. The cell density dropped 61 % for bacteria growing in toluene and 36 % for bacteria in the glucose/toluene mixture after TCE injection, but the TCE treatment had little effect on bacteria supplied with glucose alone. The decrease in cell number was caused by the cytotoxicity of the TCE metabolized by tod. The results from the real-time qRT-PCR revealed that TCE was capable of inducing tod expression in a toluene-dependent manner and that the tod expression level increased 50 times in toluene and 3 times in the toluene/glucose mixture after 6 hours of TCE treatment. Furthermore, validation of the rpoD gene as a reference gene for P. putida F1 was performed in this study, providing a valuable foundation for future studies to use real-time qRT-PCR in the analysis of the P. putida F1 strain.
Epidemiology of Parkinsonism and Parkinson's disease in Sub-Saharan Africa: Nigerian profile

Parkinsonism and Parkinson’s disease (PD) are the most common movement disorders (neurological syndromes characterized by paucity of voluntary and automatic movements or excessive movements unrelated to muscle weakness or spasticity), and they are generally perceived to have lower prevalence and incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) because of the relative youthfulness of the SSA population (<5% are over 65 years of age), underrecognition, paucity of published reports, and cultural perception of neurologic disorders generally as being part of normal ageing. [1]
Three Essays of Applied Bayesian Modeling: Financial Return Contagion, Benchmarking Small Area Estimates, and Time-Varying Dependence

This dissertation is composed of three chapters, each an application of Bayesian statistical models to particular research questions. In Chapter 1, we evaluate systemic risk exposure of financial institutions. Building upon traditional regime switching approaches, we propose a network model for volatility contagion to assess linkages between institutions in the financial system. Focusing empirical analysis on the financial sector, we find that network connectivity has dynamic properties, with linkages between institutions increasing immediately before the recent crisis. Out-of-sample forecasts demonstrate the ability of the model to predict losses during distress periods. We find that institutional exposure to crisis events depends upon the structure of linkages, not strictly the number of linkages. In Chapter 2, we develop procedures for benchmarking small area estimates. In sample surveys, precision can be increased by introducing small area models which “borrow strength” by incorporating auxiliary covariate information. One consequence of using small area models is that small area estimates at lower geographical levels typically will not aggregate to the estimate at the corresponding higher geographical levels. Benchmarking is the statistical procedure for reconciling these differences. Two new approaches to Bayesian benchmarking are introduced, one procedure based on Minimum Discrimination Information, and another for Bayesian self-consistent conditional benchmarking. Notably the proposed procedures construct adjusted posterior distributions whose moments all satisfy benchmarking constraints. In the context of the Fay-Herriot model, simulations are conducted to assess benchmarking performance. In Chapter 3, we exploit the Pair Copula Construction (PCC) to develop a flexible multivariate model for time-varying dependence. The PCC is an extremely flexible model for capturing complex, but static, multivariate dependency. We use a Bayesian framework to
The State of Administration of Health Services among Secondary Schools in Cross River State of Nigeria

This study investigates the implementation of health services programme among public and private secondary schools in Cross River State of Nigeria. The five research questions aimed at finding out the state of access to module health services, nursing services, and health education. Other areas of the research are participation in games and sports and participation in healthpromoting clubs in public and private secondary schools in the State. Samples comprising of 336 teachers from 104 secondary schools responded to a 12-item Principals and Teachers opinion on secondary school health services questionnaire. The findings show that there are significant differences between public and private secondary schools on administration of health services, health education and health-related programmes. It is recommended that since health service is the right of all citizens, government should ensure equitable distribution of health service and personnel to both public and private secondary schools in the State. School principals and proprietors should be aware that students need good health in order to perform well in their academics. This realization should make them to promote health-related programmes in their schools.
Hacks, Flacks, and Spin Doctors Meet the Media: An Examination of the Congressional Press Secretary as a (Potential) Public Relations Professional

In this study, I examine the "theories in the heads" of the Congressional press secretaries, a group of professional communication managers, who, to date, have been neglected in the literature. The data—generated via a focus group, semistructured interviews, and a survey—suggest that the press secretaries, as they mature in their position, gradually (a) become members of the dominant coalition, (b) have a relationship with the media based on "guarded honesty. " and (c) tend to practice a press agentry model of public relations. I conclude by suggesting that these individuals, although they share characteristics of many public relations professionals, ought not be automatically labeled as such until additional studies (in which the press secretaries serve as units of analysis) are conducted.
A diversidade através da história: a inserção no trabalho de pessoas com deficiência

O presente artigo, de natureza teorica, tem por objetivo contribuir com os estudos de diversidade que se debrucam sobre a insercao de pessoas com deficiencia no mercado de trabalho. O pressuposto adotado foi de que a forma de interpretacao compartilhada pelas pessoas sobre a deficiencia e um fator explicativo importante para a gestao da diversidade, devido ao seu impacto nas acoes e escolhas das pessoas. Utilizou-se metodo de analise historica das principais invariantes ou padroes de comportamento que permanecem nas visoes compartilhadas sobre a deficiencia ao longo do tempo. A partir da analise da literatura estrangeira e nacional foram identificadas seis matrizes de interpretacao sobre a deficiencia que podem ser utilizadas como instrumentos heuristicos para a compreensao da diversidade nas organizacoes: a matriz da subsistencia/ sobrevivencia; a matriz da sociedade ideal e funcao instrumental da pessoa; a matriz espiritual; a matriz da normalidade; a matriz da inclusao social e; a matriz tecnica.
The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective

During the past two decades, Robert Allen’s researches into English agriculture have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the nature and pace of rising agricultural productivity between the late middle ages and the 19th century. More recently, Allen has turned his attention to the study of real wages as a measure of economic development and begun investigating the progress of wages in other parts of the globe. These different strands have come together in this book, the British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. The book is neatly divided into two parts, the first looking at the British economy prior to industrialisation, and the second looking at the industrial revolution itself. Whilst parts of the book recapitulate research previously published, there is much that is new and Allen presents us with a clear yet many-layered argument about the nature and causes of the industrial revolution, and about why it occurred in Britain, as opposed to anywhere else, when it did. These of course are questions that have already received substantial attention, yet there can be no doubting that this book makes an important contribution to the existing literature. Though by training an economic historian, Allen manages to present complex economic analysis in a clear and intelligible style, and the book largely succeeds in the series’ remit of writing guides accessible to undergraduates. This is more than a student textbook, however. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective provides a novel interpretation of the industrial revolution that will be important to experts in the field. So without further hesitation let us start to unpack Allen’s account of the world’s first industrial revolution.
Fraud Risk and Audit Planning

This paper describes fraud risk factors identified by practicing auditors relative to their own clients, and the relationship of those factors to fraud risk assessments and audit planning decisions. When the U.S. Auditing Standards Board (ASB) developed SAS No. 82, a major concern was whether and how to incorporate specific fraud risk factors into the standard. This issue remains important, as the ASB and the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) continue to examine auditor's responsibilities for fraud detection. This paper contributes to the literature by providing evidence on the prevalence of certain types of fraud risk factors in audit practice and their impact on audit planning. To address these issues, we asked practicing Big 5 auditors to identify specific fraud risk factors of an actual client, assess the client's level of fraud risk, and plan audit tests to address fraud. We find that a high proportion of clients exhibit one or more fraud risk factors, most frequently related to industry/competitive position, management integrity, internal control system quality, financial condition, and pressure to meet financial targets. While fraud risk factors are often documented, fraud risk assessments are not well related to the number of those factors, overall or by individual type. All types of fraud risk factors are statistically associated with some form of audit testing response, but the nature of the audit test planned varies by risk factor type. Results of the study also show that the effect of fraud risk assessments on audit test planning varies according to the nature of the audit test planned.
Energy-Efficient Design of Sequential Channel Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks: Optimal Sensing Strategy, Power Allocation, and Sensing Order

Energy-efficient design has become increasingly important to battery-powered wireless devices. In this paper, we focus on the energy efficiency of a cognitive radio network, in which a secondary user senses the channels licensed to some primary users sequentially before it decides to transmit. Energy is consumed in both the channel sensing and transmission processes. The energy-efficient design calls for a careful design in the sensing-access strategies and the sensing order, with the sensing strategy specifying when to stop sensing and start transmission, the access strategy specifying the power level to be used upon transmission, and the sensing order specifying the sequence of channel sensing. Hence, the objective of this paper is to identify the sensing-access strategies and the sensing order that achieve the maximum energy efficiency. We first investigate the design when the channel sensing order is given and formulate the above design problem as a stochastic sequential decision-making problem. To solve it, we study another parametric formulation of the original problem, which rewards transmission throughput and penalizes energy consumption. Dynamic programming can be applied to identify the optimal strategy for the parametric problem. Then, by exploring the relationship between the two formulations and making use of the monotonicity property of the parametric formulation, we develop an algorithm to find the optimal sensing-access strategies for the original problem. Furthermore, we study the joint design of the channel sensing order and the sensing-access strategies. Lastly, the performance of the proposed designs is evaluated through numerical results.