Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Research Area Markets and Politics Research Unit Market Processes and Governance Schwerpunkt Märkte Und Politik Abteilung Marktprozesse Und Steuerung Contests with Investment

Perfectly discriminating contests (or all pay auction) are widely used as a model of situations where individuals devote resources to win some prize. In reality such contests are often preceded by investments of the contestants into their ability to fight in the contest. This paper studies a two stage game where in the first stage, players can invest to lower their bid cost in a perfectly discriminating contest, which is played in the second stage. Different assumptions on the timing of investment are studied. With simultaneous investments, equilibria in which players play a pure strategy in the investment stage are asymmetric, exhibit incomplete rent dissipation, and expected effort is reduced relative to the game without investment. There also are symmetric mixed strategy equilibria with complete rent dissipation. With sequential investment, the first mover always invests enough to deter the second mover from investing, and enjoys a first mover advantage. I also look at unobservable investments and endogenous timing of investments. * I would like to thank two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Any errors are mine. Spiel mit endogener Zugfolge.
Role of nuclear progesterone receptor isoforms in uterine pathophysiology.

BACKGROUND Progesterone is a key hormonal regulator of the female reproductive system. It plays a major role to prepare the uterus for implantation and in the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy. Actions of progesterone on the uterine tissues (endometrium, myometrium and cervix) are mediated by the combined effects of two progesterone receptor (PR) isoforms, designated PR-A and PR-B. Both receptors function primarily as ligand-activated transcription factors. Progesterone action on the uterine tissues is qualitatively and quantitatively determined by the relative levels and transcriptional activities of PR-A and PR-B. The transcriptional activity of the PR isoforms is affected by specific transcriptional coregulators and by PR post-translational modifications that affect gene promoter targeting. In this context, appropriate temporal and cell-specific expression and function of PR-A and PR-B are critical for normal uterine function. METHODS Relevant studies describing the role of PRs in uterine physiology and pathology (endometriosis, uterine leiomyoma, endometrial cancer, cervical cancer and recurrent pregnancy loss) were comprehensively searched using PubMed, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and Google Scholar and critically reviewed. RESULTS Progesterone, acting through PR-A and PR-B, regulates the development and function of the endometrium and induces changes in cells essential for implantation and the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy. During pregnancy, progesterone via the PRs promotes myometrial relaxation and cervical closure. Withdrawal of PR-mediated progesterone signaling triggers menstruation and parturition. PR-mediated progesterone signaling is anti-mitogenic in endometrial epithelial cells, and as such, mitigates the tropic effects of estrogen on eutopic normal endometrium, and on ectopic implants in endometriosis. Similarly, ligand-activated PRs function as tumor suppressors in endometrial cancer cells through inhibition of key cellular signaling pathways required for growth. In contrast, progesterone via PR activation appears to increase leiomyoma growth. The exact role of PRs in cervical cancer is unclear. PRs regulate implantation and therefore aberrant PR function may be implicated in recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL). PRs likely regulate key immunogenic factors involved in RPL. However, the exact role of PRs in the pathophysiology of RPL and the use of progesterone for therapeutic benefit remains uncertain. CONCLUSIONS PRs are key mediators of progesterone action in uterine tissues and are essential for normal uterine function. Aberrant PR function (due to abnormal expression and/or function) is a major cause of uterine pathophysiology. Further investigation of the underlying mechanisms of PR isoform action in the uterus is required, as this knowledge will afford the opportunity to create progestin/PR-based therapeutics to treat various uterine pathologies.
Prevention of diabetes in the BB rat by essential fatty acid deficiency. Relationship between physiological and biochemical changes

Essential fatty acid (EFA) deficiency exerts a striking protective effect in several animal models of autoimmune disease. We now report that EFA deprivation prevents diabetes in the BB rat, an animal model of human insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. In diabetes-prone (DP)-BB rats, the incidences of spontaneous diabetes and insulitis (the pathological substrate of autoimmune diabetes) were greatly reduced by EFA deficiency. This beneficial effect of the deficiency state was also seen in diabetes-resistant (DR)-BB rats that, after treatment with antibody to eliminate RT6+ T cells, would otherwise have become diabetic. The susceptibility of EFA-deprived DP-BB rats to spontaneous diabetes was restored when they were given dietary supplements of linoleate at 70 d of age (during the usual period of susceptibility), but not when they were repleted beginning at 120 d (after the peak incidence of diabetes). EFA deficiency did lead to growth retardation, but calorically restricted control rats demonstrated that the protective effect of the deficiency state was not a function of decreased weight. To examine the relationship between the biochemical changes of EFA deficiency and its physiological effects in this system, we compared the fatty acid changes that occurred in EFA-deficient animals that did and did not develop diabetes. Nondiabetic animals had significantly lower levels of (n-6) fatty acids (i.e., linoleate and arachidonate) and higher levels of oleate, an (n-9) fatty acid, than did diabetic animals. Levels of 20:3(n-9), the fatty acid that uniquely characterizes EFA deficiency, were similar in both groups, however. Among diabetic EFA-deficient rats, the age at onset of diabetes was found to correlate inversely with the level of (n-6) fatty acids, the least depleted animals becoming diabetic earliest, whereas there was no correlation with levels of 20:3(n-9). Among animals repleted with linoleate beginning at 70 d, restoration of susceptibility to diabetes correlated with normalization of the level of arachidonate. In summary, EFA deprivation reduced the frequency of diabetes in both DP and RT6- depleted DR-BB rats. This protective effect was strongly associated with depletion of (n-6) fatty acids, particularly arachidonate, but not with accumulation of the abnormal 20:3(n-9). Conjecturally, arachidonate and/or a metabolite may play a key role in mediating inflammatory injury in this animal model of autoimmune diabetes.
Robust voice activity detection using gammatone filtering and entropy

Voice activity detector (VAD) is used to detect the presence or absence of human voice in a signal. A robust VAD algorithm is essential to distinguish human voice in a noisy acoustic signal. There were many recent works in development of robust VAD which focus on unsupervised features extraction such as temporal variation, signal-to-noise ratio in [1] and etc. However, these methods are typically sensitive to nonstationary noise especially under low SNR. To overcome these problems, this paper presents a robust voice activity detection (VAD) method via a combination of gammatone filtering and entropy as an information-theoretic measure in the detection algorithm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested using speech signals from TIMIT test corpus with additive noise at varying degrees of signal-to-noise ratio. The results show that the proposed robust VAD outperforms other existing methods in terms of detection accuracy.
Worker Displacement in an Expanding Economy

Following the 1990–91 recession, labor market conditions were unusually sluggish compared to earlier recoveries. However, as economic activity accelerated in 1993, and especially in 1994, the job market improved, with the result that both the level and risk of job displacement fell during the mid-1990s. Between 1993 and 1994, 2.4 million workers permanently lost jobs they had held for at least 3 years because their plant or company closed down or moved, there was insufficient work for them to do, or their positions or shifts were abolished. By comparison, 2.8 million long-tenured workers were displaced during 1991–92, a period of slower economic growth. The displacement rate, which reflects the likelihood of job loss during specific periods, fell from 3.9 percent during 1991–92 to 3.2 percent during 1993–94. (See table 1.) This article examines the recent experience of job loss and reemployment, using data from the BLS surveys of displaced workers. For the following analysis, 2 years of data from each of the displaced worker surveys were used to construct a time series that begins with the 1981–82 period (from the 1984 survey) and ends with the 1993– 94 period (from the 1996 survey); particular emphasis is placed on results from the last two studies. (See appendix A for a description of the displaced worker surveys.) The analysis focuses on workers who lost jobs they had held for at least 3 years, under the assumption that these long-tenured workers have developed a more-than-marginal attachment to their jobs.
The Development of Emerging Stock Markets and the Demand for Cross-Listing

This study provides new insights into the link between local stock-market development and the demand for cross-listing. Analyzing 14 Central and Eastern European stock markets over two decades, we find that the link is non-monotonic: cross-listing activity first grows and then decreases as the local market develops. We support that country-level finding with firm-level evidence on non-monotonic preferences to issue and terminate depositary receipt programs. The results have important policy implications and they shed new light on the competitiveness and prospects of local stock markets in emerging economies.
Voters prefer more qualified mayors, but does it matter for public finances? Evidence for Germany

This paper studies the importance of politicians’ qualification, in terms of education and experience, for fiscal outcomes. The analysis is based on a large panel for 2031 German municipalities for which we have collected information on municipal budgets as well as the election results and qualification levels of mayoral candidates. We principally use a regression discontinuity design focusing on close elections to estimate causal effects. We find that mayors with prior experience in office have a tendency to reduce the level of local public debt, lower total municipal expenditures and decrease the local taxes, even though these results are only significant in some specifications. In contrast, the education level of the mayor exerts no significant effects on the overall fiscal performance of the municipality. The results are partly surprising as both education and experience are shown to matter greatly in the electoral success of mayoral candidates.
Motivational Orientations for Learning English: The Case of Turkish University Students

In this article, the motivation and orientations of first year university students towards learning English in a globalizing world are studied. Background information comprises studies describing the driving forces such as instrumental and integrative orientations and their components. The diversity of the results obtained in various investigations is discussed and the methodology followed is disclosed. The article utilizes a survey consisting of a questionnaire and open ended questions together with subsequent focus group interviews. Subsequent factor analysis revealed three independent orientations categorized as instrumental, integrative and educational, all clearly delineated and not blended. It is ascertained that students' main orientations for learning English are to find a well-paying job, and to stay connected to the rest of the world through media and foreign friends. The study highlights the findings of similar surveys covering most of the university students in this globalizing world, and claims that Turkish university students want to learn English in order to master a skill which has become a requirement for participating and surviving in the international labor markets - a perspective that may provide a more realistic insight about the English Language Teaching in the country.
Atypically rightward cerebral asymmetry in male adults with autism stratifies individuals with and without language delay

In humans, both language and fine motor skills are associated with left‐hemisphere specialization, whereas visuospatial skills are associated with right‐hemisphere specialization. Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) show a profile of deficits and strengths that involves these lateralized cognitive functions. Here we test the hypothesis that regions implicated in these functions are atypically rightward lateralized in individuals with ASC and, that such atypicality is associated with functional performance. Participants included 67 male, right‐handed adults with ASC and 69 age‐ and IQ‐matched neurotypical males. We assessed group differences in structural asymmetries in cortical regions of interest with voxel‐based analysis of grey matter volumes, followed by correlational analyses with measures of language, motor and visuospatial skills. We found stronger rightward lateralization within the inferior parietal lobule and reduced leftward lateralization extending along the auditory cortex comprising the planum temporale, Heschl's gyrus, posterior supramarginal gyrus, and parietal operculum, which was more pronounced in ASC individuals with delayed language onset compared to those without. Planned correlational analyses showed that for individuals with ASC, reduced leftward asymmetry in the auditory region was associated with more childhood social reciprocity difficulties. We conclude that atypical cerebral structural asymmetry is a potential candidate neurophenotype of ASC. Hum Brain Mapp 37:230–253, 2016. © 2015 The Authors Human Brain Mapping Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Maximum Margin Multiclass Nearest Neighbors

We develop a general framework for margin-based multicategory classification in metric spaces. The basic work-horse is a margin-regularized version of the nearest-neighbor classifier. We prove generalization bounds that match the state of the art in sample size n and significantly improve the dependence on the number of classes k. Our point of departure is a nearly Bayes-optimal finite-sample risk bound independent of k. Although k-free, this bound is un-regularized and non-adaptive, which motivates our main result: Rademacher and scale-sensitive margin bounds with a logarithmic dependence on k. As the best previous risk estimates in this setting were of order √k, our bound is exponentially sharper. From the algorithmic standpoint, in doubling metric spaces our classifier may be trained on n examples in O(n2 log n) time and evaluated on new points in O(log n) time.
Evaluation of Correlation of Cell Cycle Proteins and Ki-67 Interaction in Paranasal Sinus Inverted Papilloma Prognosis and Squamous Cell Carcinoma Transformation

The recurrent sinonasal inverted papilloma (IP) could be transformed to sinonasal squamous cell carcinoma. We use protein expression patterns by immunohistochemical method to see whether the expression of p53, p16, p21, and p27 belongs to cell-cycle-regulators and PCNA (proliferating cell nuclear antigen) and Ki-67 the proliferation markers in sixty patients with sinonasal inverted papilloma, and 10 of them with squamous cell carcinoma transformation. Significantly elevated levels of Ki-67, p27, and PCNA in IP with squamous cell carcinoma transformation of sinonasal tract compared with inverted papilloma were revealed. No variation of p16, p21, PLUNC (palate, lung, and nasal epithelium clone protein) and p53 expression was correlated to sinonasal IP malignant transformation by multivariate survey. However, we found elevated PLUNC expression in IPs with multiple recurrences. Finally, we found that PCNA, p27 may interact with CDK1 which promote IP cell proliferation and correlate to sinonasal squamous cell carcinoma. Ki-67 could work throughout the cell cycles to cause malignant transformation. In conclusion, this is a first study showing the correlation of Ki-67, PCNA interacted with CDK1 might lead to malignant transformation. Elevated PLUNC expression in the sinonasal IPs was related to multiple recurrences in human.
Common agency contracting with endogenous information gathering

This paper examines a common agency model in which a wholesaler can strategically decide whether or not to acquire pre-contractual information about her cost structure before di¤erent retailers submit their contract o¤ers, since this information may improve the wholesalers bargaining position in her negotiation with the retailers afterwards. Speci cally, this paper shows that the results of standard common agency games, where the agent is assumed to be exogenously informed, are equilibria only for particular parameters values. Additionally, it also demonstrates that allowing the wholesaler to decide when to acquire information (weakly) improves e¢ ciency, when goods are substitutable in the production process. Finally, this study analyzes under which parameter values e¢ ciency can be enhanced by the introduction of a new retailer in the market, and in which cases e¢ ciency can in fact be improved by reducing the number of retailers.
Adaptation of pulmonary receptors in the spontaneously breathing anaesthetized rat.

It has been suggested that species with high breathing frequencies have pulmonary stretch receptors which adapt more rapidly than species with low breathing frequencies. This has proved not to be so. Our hypothesis is that this theory is in fact correct if modified so that overall rate of adaptation of afferent vagal activity, i.e. the sum of stretch and rapidly adapting receptors, is considered. A rapidly breathing species, such as the rat, would thus have a greater proportion of rapidly adapting receptors, than a more slowly breathing species. To test this hypothesis, we measured the proportion of rapidly adapting pulmonary mechanoreceptors in spontaneously breathing rats for comparison with existing results from more slowly breathing species. We found there to be one rapidly adapting receptor for every three slowly adapting receptors present. This measurement has not previously been made in spontaneously breathing rats. The ratio of rapidly to slowly adapting pulmonary receptors in the species sequence cat-rabbit-rat is the same as the ratio of their breathing frequencies (3:4:10). We propose that the difference in proportion of slowly to rapidly adapting pulmonary receptors in different species may be related to their eupnoeic breathing frequency.
Adjustment to change in familiar and unfamiliar task constraints

Abstract The aim of this study was to assess the rate of adjustment to changes in task constraints that are familiar and unfamiliar when a change in the pattern of sequencing of segmental movements is not required. The selected task was underwater flutter kicking with flippers (familiar) and without flippers (unfamiliar). Nine male competitive age-group swimmers were assigned either to an unfamiliar “leg flipper” task, a familiar “foot flipper” task or a “control” group to perform five trials without flippers (all groups), 60 trials with flippers, and a post-test comprising 10 trials without flippers (all groups). Kinematic variables were calculated from digitized video data. Whether the movement pattern was appropriate for the task was indicated by the percent power in the fundamental Fourier frequency harmonic of the vertical oscillations of the hip, knee, and ankle, and by a “velocity index” that was defined as the ratio of the hip-to-knee and knee-to-ankle velocities of the fundamental Fourier waveform. Adjustment to reproduce the appropriate movement pattern occurred within the first block of 10 trials regardless of whether the constraints were familiar or unfamiliar. However, optimal performance in terms of swimming speed was not obtained following change to the unfamiliar constraint until after 10 trials.
The Effects of Putative Equipment Bias and Previous Success and Failure on Competitive Performance, Level of Aspiration and Causal Attribution

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact ecommons@luc.edu. Magna Cum Laude with a major in psychology. While attending wyola University of Chicago, he was elected a member in 1971 of Alpha Sigma Nu and Phi Sigma Tau. In September, 1972, he entered the graduate program in clinical psychology at :Wyola University of Chicago. He fulfilled his clerkship requirement in clinical training at West Side Veterans Administration HospitcU.
The Intertemporal Relation between Risk and Returns in Australia

We explore the intertemporal relation between the conditional mean and the conditional variance of the industry portfolio returns and Fama-French 25 Size/Book-to-Market portfolio returns in Australia using a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model. We estimate a portfolio's conditional covariance with the market and test whether the conditional covariance can help predict the time-variation in the portfolio's expected returns. Our results show that there is no significant relation between asset returns and market returns. We also examine asset returns with size and value factors, and we find that size and value factors only matter for the Size/Book-to-Market portfolios, but not for the industry portfolios. Lastly, we examine the role of the macroeconomic variables in determining the time-variation of asset returns, and there is no evidence of the relationship between asset returns and the macroeconomic variables.
The Impact of Service Quality on Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty and Brand Image: Evidence from Hotel Industry of Pakistan

The rationale of this study is to look at the association between services quality of Pakistani hotel and to scrutinize cause on customer satisfaction, brand image and customer loyalty. The primary data was collected from 5 and 8 star hotels of Pakistan. The response rate was 86%. Structural equation modeling (SEM) technique was used to analyze the data. The findings suggested that high quality of services boost up the customer satisfaction and then afterward this satisfaction will strengthen the customer loyalty, our results also matched with Brodie et al., (2009). Last but not the least strong customer loyalty directly related to strong brand image.