Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Special Issue on Network Theory and Social Housing

This special issue of Housing Theory & Society on network theory and social housing emerged from a series of workshops on institutional change in social housing convened by a working group of the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR). Over several years of discussion on the nature of change in social housing systems in Europe, the working group became interested in the application of theory to understanding institutional changes in housing systems occurring at organization, local, national and European levels. Many of these changes in social housing systems were the result of reforms in public management and governance during the 1980s and 1990s that replaced hierarchical relationships among actors with market and/or network relationships (Hood 1991, Kickert & Koppenjan 1997). These new forms of co-ordination (Thompson et al. 1991) introduced different assumptions about communication, conflict resolution, flexibility and decisionmaking (Powell 1990). The working group’s research focused on both the nature of change processes and how these affected outcomes at the organizational level and at the sector level. While a range of perspectives including new institutional economics, new public management (Mullins, Reid & Walker 2001), welfare regime theory and social constructionism (Mullins 2002) have been considered as potentially fruitful frameworks for the group’s work, over time our attention became increasingly focused on frameworks associated with networks and systems thinking, and this special issue is intended to illustrate the potential of these frameworks. The network approach to studying aggregate organizational behaviour offered a number of advantages over rational actor approaches, such as principal:agent theory, that treat policy actors as independent agents responding to incentives in pursuit of their individual objectives. In addition to addressing the characteristics of and constraints
Brachial artery endothelial function is unchanged after acute sprint interval exercise in sedentary men and women

What is the central question of this study? What is the acute brachial artery endothelial function response to sprint interval exercise and are there sex‐based differences? What is the main finding and its importance? Brachial artery endothelial function did not change in either men or women following an acute session of SIT consisting of 3 × 20 s ‘all‐out’ cycling sprints. Our findings suggest this low‐volume protocol may not be sufficient to induce functional changes in the brachial artery of sedentary, but otherwise healthy adults.
The Relationship between Foreign Direct Investment and Tourism: Empirical Evidence from China

This paper investigates the causal link between foreign direct investment and tourism in China by employing the Granger causality test under a VAR framework proposed by Zapata and Rambaldi (1997). Only a one-directional causality is found from foreign direct investment to tourism. This explains the rapid growth in the tourism market in China during the past decade.
Review and Evaluation of Root Respiration and of Natural and Agricultural Processes of Soil Aeration

Movement of O2 in the soil is mainly diffusive. Respiration consists of plant root and microbial O2 uptake, roughly of the same magnitude. Reduced O2 and elevated CO2 concentrations negatively affect plant growth and productivity. O2 concentration, air content, and ODR are good quantifiers for O2 availability to plant roots. Adding bubbles or H2O2 to irrigation and injecting air to soil showed mostly favorable results.
Further evidence for the memory state heuristic: Recognition latency predictions for binary inferences

According to the recognition heuristic (RH), for decision domains where recognition is a valid predictor of a choice criterion, recognition alone is used to make inferences whenever one object is recognized and the other is not, irrespective of further knowledge. Erdfelder, Küpper-Tetzel, and Mattern (2011) questioned whether the recognition judgment itself affects decisions or rather the memory strength underlying it. Specifically, they proposed to extend the RH to the memory state heuristic (MSH), which assumes a third memory state of uncertainty in addition to recognition certainty and rejection certainty. While the MSH already gathered significant support, one of its basic and more counterintuitive predictions has not been tested so far: In guessing pairs (none of the objects recognized), the object more slowly judged as unrecognized should be preferred, since it is more likely to be in a higher memory state. In this paper, we test this prediction along with other recognition latency predictions of the MSH, thereby adding to the body of research supporting the MSH.
Defining the Activities and Effectiveness of the Human Resource Department: A Multiple Constituency Approach

Human resource strategy research has focused primarily on the effects of business objectives and other organizational contingencies on organizational-wide human resource systems and policies. Relatively little attention has been paid to the human resource function at the business implementation level. The multiple constituency approach was proposed to be a meaningful conceptual basis for analyzing the activities and effectiveness of the human resource department at the firm's operating level. A research project involving three separate studies found support on the validity of the multiple constituency approach. Constituency perspectives differed in both the activities desired of the human resource department and criteria meaningful for evaluating its effectiveness. The largest discrepancy was between constituencies with a strategic focus and constituencies with an operational orientation. Implications of the research findings and of the multiple constituency approach for strategic human resource management research and practice are discussed.
Explaining disparity in outcome from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM): a case study in Chilimo Forest, Ethiopia

This paper examines the constraints on achieving positive social and environmental outcomes from community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Ethiopia, a rarely researched country. A comparative case study on successful and failed CBNRM in a pioneering and influential CBNRM project revealed the important determinant for disparity in outcome to be whether the existing collective decision-making arrangements on use rights and benefit-sharing support the members to whom those benefits are salient. Institutionalising CBNRM in government forest policy and improving the capacity to implement it are recommended to improve current conditions.
The Hartwick rule and the characterization of constant consumption paths in the presence of an exhaustible resource

This paper deals with the interpretation of the Hartwick rule in the particular Dasgupta-Heal-Solow model with one capital good and one non-renewable resource. It is argued that the rule is more a descriptive property of constant consumption paths than a sustainability indicator. It is shown that investing the rents from the resource use into man-made capital is a necessary condition for an efficient resource depletion but it is not a sufficient condition for sustainability. A sustainable consumption indicator is described to characterize the sustainability of constant consumption paths.
Pivotal suppliers and market power in experimental supply function competition

In the process of regulatory reform in the electric power industry, the mitigation of market power is one of the basic problems regulators have to deal with. We use experimental data to study the sources of market power with supply function competition, akin to the competition in wholesale electricity markets. An acute form of market power may arise if a supplier is pivotal; that is, if the supplier's capacity is required in order to meet demand. To be able to isolate the impact of demand and capacity conditions on market power, our treatments vary the distribution of demand levels as well as the amount and symmetry of the allocation of production capacity between different firms. We relate our results to a descriptive power index and to the predictions of two alternative models: a supply function equilibrium (SFE) model and a multi-unit auction (MUA) model. We find that pivotal suppliers do indeed exercise their market power in the experiments. We also find that the SFE model better captures the behavior of pivotal suppliers than the MUA model.
Sequential Copying Networks

Copying mechanism shows effectiveness in sequence-to-sequence based neural network models for text generation tasks, such as abstractive sentence summarization and question generation. However, existing works on modeling copying or pointing mechanism only considers single word copying from the source sentences. In this paper, we propose a novel copying framework, named Sequential Copying Networks (SeqCopyNet), which not only learns to copy single words, but also copies sequences from the input sentence. It leverages the pointer networks to explicitly select a sub-span from the source side to target side, and integrates this sequential copying mechanism to the generation process in the encoder-decoder paradigm. Experiments on abstractive sentence summarization and question generation tasks show that the proposed SeqCopyNet can copy meaningful spans and outperforms the baseline models.
SIP1 protein protects cells from DNA damage-induced apoptosis and has independent prognostic value in bladder cancer

The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) contributes to cancer metastasis. Two ZEB family members, ZEB1 and ZEB2(SIP1), inhibit transcription of the E-cadherin gene and induce EMT in vitro. However, their relevance to human cancer is insufficiently studied. Here, we performed a comparative study of SIP1 and ZEB1 proteins in cancer cell lines and in one form of human malignancy, carcinoma of the bladder. Whereas ZEB1 protein was expressed in all E-cadherin-negative carcinoma cell lines, being in part responsible for the high motility of bladder cancer cells, SIP1 was hardly ever detectable in carcinoma cells in culture. However, SIP1 represented an independent factor of poor prognosis (P = 0.005) in a series of bladder cancer specimens obtained from patients treated with radiotherapy. In contrast, ZEB1 was rarely expressed in tumor tissues; and E-cadherin status did not correlate with the patients' survival. SIP1 protected cells from UV- and cisplatin-induced apoptosis in vitro but had no effect on the level of DNA damage. The anti-apoptotic effect of SIP1 was independent of either cell cycle arrest or loss of cell-cell adhesion and was associated with reduced phosphorylation of ATM/ATR targets in UV-treated cells. The prognostic value of SIP1 and its role in DNA damage response establish a link between genetic instability and metastasis and suggest a potential importance for this protein as a therapeutic target. In addition, we conclude that the nature of an EMT pathway rather than the deregulation of E-cadherin per se is critical for the progression of the disease and patients' survival.
Cytokine Disturbances in Coronary Artery Ectasia Do Not Support Atherosclerosis Pathogenesis

Background: Coronary artery ectasia (CAE) is a rare disorder commonly associated with additional features of atherosclerosis. In the present study, we aimed to examine the systemic immune-inflammatory response that might associate CAE. Methods: Plasma samples were obtained from 16 patients with coronary artery ectasia (mean age 64.9 ± 7.3 years, 6 female), 69 patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) and angiographic evidence for atherosclerosis (age 64.5 ± 8.7 years, 41 female), and 140 controls (mean age 58.6 ± 4.1 years, 40 female) with normal coronary arteries. Samples were analyzed at Umeå University Biochemistry Laboratory, Sweden, using the V-PLEX Pro-Inflammatory Panel 1 (human) Kit. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) between patient groups and controls were determined using Mann–Whitney U-tests. Results: The CAE patients had significantly higher plasma levels of INF-γ, TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-8 (p = 0.007, 0.01, 0.001, and 0.002, respectively), and lower levels of IL-2 and IL-4 (p < 0.001 for both) compared to CAD patients and controls. The plasma levels of IL-10, IL-12p, and IL-13 were not different between the three groups. None of these markers could differentiate between patients with pure (n = 6) and mixed with minimal atherosclerosis (n = 10) CAE. Conclusions: These results indicate an enhanced systemic pro-inflammatory response in CAE. The profile of this response indicates activation of macrophages through a pathway and trigger different from those of atherosclerosis immune inflammatory response.
Propofol-fentanyl versus midazolam-fentanyl: a comparative study of local sedation techniques for cataract surgery.

Administering intravenous sedation in conjunction with intraoperative monitoring to cataract surgery patients is a widely accepted technique. Numerous articles report local sedation techniques for cataract surgery that are, in essence, abbreviated general anesthetic techniques for insertion of the retrobulbar block (RBB). Because of variations in levels of consciousness, a number of complications have been encountered with this specific patient population, ie, movement upon insertion of the RBB, intraoperative patient movement, confusion, hypotension, respiratory depression, and respiratory arrest. In an attempt to meet the specific needs of this patient population, a study comparing propofol-fentanyl with midazolam-fentanyl was initiated. Seventy-five (ASA 1 to 3) patients were randomly assigned to two groups: propofol-fentanyl (P/F) or midazolam-fentanyl (M/F). The mean age of patients in the P/F group was 71.1 +/- 13 SD, and the mean age in the M/F group was 74.4 +/- 8.8 SD. All patients entered the operating room unpremedicated. Before the RBB, patients in both groups were given a single intravenous dose of 50 micrograms fentanyl. Propofol (mean dose, 24.7 mg) or midazolam (mean dose, 1.58 mg) was then titrated to slurred speech or nystagmus. Patients' responses to the RBB were evaluated and recorded by an objective observer. The amnestic properties of both agents were evaluated by patient questioning at 10 minutes and 24 hours. Levels of discomfort were evaluated on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being extremely uncomfortable and 5 being noticeable without pain. Respiratory depressant effects of both techniques was assessed via continuous pulse oximetry. Results were analyzed using the chi 2 test, rank t test, and SD. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
End-to-End Speech Emotion Recognition Using Deep Neural Networks

Affect recognition is an important component towards the better interaction between human and machines. Applications of emotion recognition in speech can be found in several areas such as human computer interaction and call centres. In recent years, Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have been used with great success in recognizing emotions. In this paper, we present a new model for continuous emotion recognition from speech. Our model, which was trained end-to-end, is comprised of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), which extracts features from the raw signal, and stacked on top of it a 2-layer Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), so as to consider the contextual information in the data. Our model significantly outperforms, in terms of concordance correlation coefficient, the state-of-the-art methods for the RECOLA database.
The impact of IFRS on net income and equity: evidence from Italian listed companies

Purpose - The mandatory conversion to IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) has represented much more than a change in accounting rules. Firms’ main concerns have been to understand the extent to which accounting differences between national GAAP and IFRS could affect their reported performance. The purpose of this paper is to address this concern by providing empirical evidence of the nature and the size of the differences between Italian accounting principles and IFRS. Design/methodology/approach - The total and individual differences between Italian GAAP and IFRS are identified and quantified in the reconciliations of net income and equity of companies listed on Findings - The empirical results indicate a more relevant total impact of such a transition on net income than equity. The analysis of individual adjustments shows a greater discrepancy between Italian GAAP and IFRS in the accounting treatment of intangible assets, income taxes, and business combinations with reference to both net income and equity. Originality/value - The main contribution of the paper is to investigate the impact of mandatory IFRS adoption for Italian listed companies’ financial results. Previous literature does not focus on such a specific country, but it offers a comparative approach to different effects of IFRS on European countries.
Competition, Efficiency, and Stability in Banking

We examine the effect of competition on banking stability using a new measure of competition based on the reallocation of profits from inefficient banks to efficient ones. In a sample of European Banks, we find that this measure does capture competition, that competition is stability-enhancing, and that the stability-enhancing effect of competition is greater for healthy banks than for fragile ones. Our results suggest that efficiency is the conduit through which competition contributes to stability and that regulators must condition policy on the health of existing banks.
Paths to IT Performance: A Configurational Analysis of IT Capabilities

This study seeks to describe and explain the manner by which the environmental uncertainty, IT strategic orientation and IT capabilities of manufacturing SMEs contribute to their IT performance, that is, to their realization of benefits from the use of IT. A qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) allows to unveil three IT capability configurations associated to high-IT performance firms. Dependent upon the configuration, the core causal conditions involve an IT Defender strategic orientation, and various combinations of IT managerial, functional, informational and technological capabilities. These results support the idea of a gestalt alignment threshold for the IT capabilities of high-IT performance firms, that is, the idea that different IT capability configurations can be equally effective.
Human resource costs and benefits of maintaining a mature‐age workforce

The global trend of an ageing workforce and government policy directions towards reversing early retirement trends raises the issue of the costs to employers of an older workforce. Data on older workers human resources costs are lacking generally in Australia and other countries. This analysis of human resource costs and benefits relies on aggregate Australia national human resources benchmarking data that are applied to older workers. The study is based on the ratio of duration of employment of older workers compared to younger workers and uses this ratio as a multiplier of human resource costs. The analysis considers recruitment, training, absenteeism and work injuries of older compared to younger workers. The analysis found that net benefits occurred through recruitment and training benefits over the costs of absenteeism and work injuries. Further non‐quantified benefits of older workers identified in international case studies are also explained. These quantified and non‐quantified benefits of older workers suggest that identified positive inducements to employers exist which support human resources investments in older workers.
Volume regulation in cortical collecting duct cells: role of AQP2

Background information. The renal CCD (cortical collecting duct) plays a role in final volume and concentration of urine by a process that is regulated by the antidiuretic hormone, [arginine]vasopressin. This hormone induces an increase in water permeability due to the translocation of AQP2 (aquaporin 2) from the intracellular vesicles to the apical membrane of principal cells. During the transition from antidiuresis to diuresis, CCD cells are exposed to changes in environmental osmolality, and cell‐volume regulation may be especially important for the maintenance of intracellular homoeostasis. Despite its importance, cell‐volume regulation in CCD cells has not been widely investigated. Moreover, no studies have been carried out till date to evaluate the putative role of AQPs during this process in renal cells.
Do foreign exchange fund managers behave like heterogeneous agents?

This paper estimates an Heterogeneous Agent Model (HAM) on currency trader indices to explain the large shifts in profitability in currency styles surrounding the global financial crisis. In the model, fund managers allocate capital conditional on recent performance to a value strategy, a momentum strategy, and a carry strategy. Subsequent estimation results reveal that (1) a large part of the behavior of currency managers can indeed be described by these three simple strategies, and (2) currency managers shift capital from recent winning styles to recent losing styles, and hence apply a negative feedback strategy. We finally show that a negative feedback strategy is indeed optimal, but currency managers could improve performance by applying it less aggressively if they were able to.
Safe enclaves, political enclaves and knowledge working.

This paper contrasts the dominant accounts of knowledge working, which have portrayed it as being relatively unproblematic, with a more critical perspective, and suggests that groupware technologies are highly political in their application. Specifically, this paper critically examines the implications arising from employees in the UK selling division of a multi-national pharmaceuticals company, harnessing the visibility that shared databases provided to politicise, whilst also showing how some use of the shared databases was deemed safe. Knowledge production is conceptualised from a communities of practice perspective, requiring the ability to make strong perspectives within a community, as well as the ability to take the perspective of another into account. This paper further analyses the empirical work with reference to Goffman’s distinction between front and back regions. The principles underlying ethnography underpinned the longitudinal research process. The paper concludes by suggesting that, rather than groupware technologies being viewed as democratic, their use should be viewed as being historically contingent and inherently political.
A Step-Up Transformerless, ZV–ZCS High-Gain DC/DC Converter With Output Voltage Regulation Using Modular Step-Up Resonant Cells for DC Grid in Wind Systems

The use of medium voltage dc (MVDC) grid in offshore wind farms has been presented as an alternative solution to eliminate the conventional bulky low frequency step-up transformers used in the medium voltage ac grid. In order to reduce the transmission losses, the trend is to increase the wind turbine output voltage to at least thousands of volts. In this paper, a variable frequency controlled MVDC converter with modular approach of combining multiple step-up resonant circuits and multistring of switches configuration is proposed for MVDC grid. The proposed converter has the following features: 1) the multistring arrangement of the switches allows much lower voltage stress across each transistor; 2) the modular step-up resonant circuits are able to achieve high voltage gain so that transformer with large turns ratio is not required; 3) zero voltage switching turn-on and zero current switching turn-off are achieved in all the switches; 4) the output MVDC level is controlled by variable frequency control of the step-up converter; and 5) circulating energy in all the resonant circuit modules is minimized through close-to-resonant operation for different load conditions. Simulation results are provided on a 4 kVac/50 kV, 2 MW converter for a wide range of load conditions. Experimental results are provided on a laboratory-scale 200 V/1.6 kV proof-of-concept prototype to highlight the merits of this paper.