Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Independencia legal de banca central en la América latina e inflación

This paper reviews the nature of the independence granted to central banks in Latin America after the reform adopted during the first half of the 1990s, quantifies the degree of their legal independence, and ascertains if there has been a negative correlation between legal central bank independence and inflation during the 1990s.Three basic conclusions emerge from the analysis. First, most central banks in Latin America enjoy today a high level of political and operational independence from a strictly legal point of view. Second, there is no clear correlation between increased legal central bank independence and inflation over the 1990s. And third, there seems to be a gap between de jure and de facto independence of central banks in the region, with the latter beign negatively and significantly correlated with inflaction. // La America Latina vive un periodo de baja inflacion comparada con la observada a lo largo de los decenios recientes. Este resultado obedece en gran parte a la implantacion de un manejo monetario y fiscal ordenado dirigido a reducir la inflacion. Para establecer un compromiso de largo plazo con la disciplina macroeconomica y con la estabilidad de precios, una de las decisiones adoptadas por los gobiernos fue la entrega de una mayor autonomia a los bancos centrales de la region. Este documento analiza el status de independencia de la banca central en la America Latina luego de la reforma legal adoptada en los anos noventa y destaca sus principales caracteristicas. Sobre esta base, cuantifica el grado de independencia legal en 17 paises, utilizando para ello el indice de Cukierman y otro indice que incorpora criterios que han adquirido relevancia en los anos recientes en la discusion respecto a buenas practicas en el establecimiento de la autonomia de los bancos centrales. A continuacion el documento contrasta el grado de independencia legal de los bancos centrales con el comportamiento de la inflacion en los anos noventa. Tres son las conclusiones principales que se obtienen de este trabajo: i) la mayoria de los bancos centrales en la America Latina goza hoy de un alto grado de independencia legal; ii) no existe una correlacion solida entre mayor independencia legal y menor inflacion, y iii) hay una brecha entre independencia de jure e independencia de facto de los bancos centrales en la America Latina. Utilizando la tasa de rotacion de gobernadores de bancos centrales como indicador de independencia efectiva, se encuentra una correlacion significativa y solida respecto al comportamiento de la inflacion.
Authenticity Assessment of Dairy Products

The authenticity of dairy products has become a focal point, attracting the attention of scientists, producers, consumers, and policymakers. Among many others, some of the practices not allowed in milk and milk products are the substitution of part of the fat or proteins, admixtures of milk of different species, additions of low-cost dairy products (mainly whey derivatives), or mislabeling of products protected by denomination of origin. A range of analytical methods to detect frauds have been developed, modified, and continually reassessed to be one step ahead of manufacturers who pursue these illegal activities. Traditional procedures to assess the authenticity of dairy products include chromatographic, electrophoretic, and immunoenzymatic methods. New approaches such as capillary electrophoresis, polymerase chain reaction, and isotope ratio mass spectrometry have also emerged alongside the latest developments in the former procedures. This work intends to provide an updated and extensive overview since 1991 on the principal applications of all these techniques together with their advantages and disadvantages for detecting the authenticity of dairy products. The scope and limits of different tools are also discussed.
Impact of Insurance for Operational Risk: Is It Worthwhile to Insure or Be Insured for Severe Losses?

Under the Basel II standards, the Operational Risk (OpRisk) advanced measurement approach allows a provision for reduction of capital as a result of insurance mitigation of up to 20%. This paper studies the behaviour of different insurance policies in the context of capital reduction for a range of possible extreme loss models and insurance policy scenarios in a multi-period, multiple risk settings. A Loss Distributional Approach (LDA) for modelling of the annual loss process, involving homogeneous compound Poisson processes for the annual losses, with heavy tailed severity models comprised of alpha-stable severities is considered. There has been little analysis of such models to date and it is believed, insurance models will play more of a role in OpRisk mitigation and capital reduction in future. The first question of interest is when would it be equitable for a bank or financial institution to purchase insurance for heavy tailed OpRisk losses under different insurance policy scenarios? The second question then pertains to Solvency II and addresses what the insurers capital would be for such operational risk scenarios under different policy offerings. In addition we consider the insurers perspective with respect to fair premium as a percentage above the expected annual claim for each insurance policy. The intention being to address questions related to VaR reduction under Basel II, SCR under Solvency II and fair insurance premiums in OpRisk for different extreme loss scenarios. In the process we provide closed form solutions for the distribution of loss process and claims process in an LDA structure as well as closed form analytic solutions for the Expected Shortfall, SCR and MCR under Basel II and Solvency II. We also provide closed form analytic solutions for the annual loss distribution of multiple risks including insurance mitigation.
Conditional conservatism and underpricing in US corporate bond market

Building upon recent research suggesting that debt markets rather than equity markets shape financial reporting, this study examines the relationship between conditional conservatism (used as a proxy for information risk) and the underpricing of newly issued corporate bonds. There are two contrasting arguments for bond underpricing: the information argument predicts that bond issuers with less information risk will experience less underpricing, while the signalling argument indicates that bond issuers with less information risk will underprice more to distinguish them from issuers with more information risk. Empirical results indicate that the signalling argument seems to better capture the dynamics of the public debt markets, with conditional conservatism being associated with greater underpricing of newly issued corporate bonds.
A note on defence spending in turkey: New findings

The relationship between defence spending and economic growth has been examined extensively in recent years using the Feder (1983) model. These studies suffer from poor statistical results. In this paper, the earlier findings of Sezgin (1997), which used the Feder model are re‐estimated. Firstly, the stationarity of variables is tested. Due to the non‐stationarity of some variables, regressions are performed using first differences of variables. Secondly, lags are introduced into the Feder model. The statistical results are highly improved. Not only is a strong positive association between defence spending and economic growth found for Turkey, but also human capital is positively correlated to Turkish economic growth with a lag.
Effect of trichloromethyl and trichloromethyl peroxyl free radicals on protein sulfhydryl content studies in model and in enzymatic carbon tetrachloride activation systems.

The effect of trichloromethyl and trichloromethyl peroxyl free radicals on protein sulfhydryl content was studied using both, model and enzymatic activation systems. In the model system activation of CCl4 to both free radicals was by UVC light and the target protein was either delipidated or undelipidated albumin. Under air, the CCl3O2. radicals were able to significantly decrease the protein SH in both albumin preparations. A small but signficant effect of UVC alone was observed with defatted albumin. No significant decreases in protein sulfhydryl were observed by . CCl3 attack on the defatted albumin. Reaction of CCl3O2. on cysteine SH led to chloroform formation indicating that a H abstraction reaction is involved in the process. UVC light has an own effect on SH group content. Similar results were obtained when the interaction was with undelipidated albumin rather than with cysteine. Their formation was significantly prevented by Trolox 1 mM in incubation mixture. When the CCl3O2. were generated by liver microsomal activation of CCl4 under air, a significant decrease in microsomal protein SH content was observed. NADPH also exerted an effect of its own. These decreasing effects were fully prevented by either Trolox or EDTA addition to incubation mixtures but not by alpha-tocopherol free or as a succinate ester. Incubation mixtures containing nuclear suspensions and NADPH led to a decrease in protein SH content. This decrease was not enhanced further by the presence of CCl4. No effect on the protein SH content was observed when either mitochondrial or cytosolic fractions were employed to attempt activation of CCl4 to . CCl3/CCl3O2. free radicals. The ability of CCl4 derived free radicals to decrease protein SH in liver microsomes could be involved in loss of activity of key SH enzymes of relevance such as microsomal calcium pump. This pump is known to be damaged during CCl4 poisoning. This effect was blamed to initiate alterations in calcium homeostasis later leading to CCl4 induced liver cell death.
The Effects of a Technology Shock in the Euro Area

The aim of this paper is to estimate the effects of a technology shock in the euro area within a structural VAR framework. Since the impact of these shocks on labor use is a controversial issue in the related literature, we give particular attention to it. Given that the estimated effects of a technology shock are quite sensible to the low-frequency properties of the labor input measure, we resort to an extensive statistical analysis to investigate whether hours worked are better characterized as stationary or difference stationary. We conduct a battery of classical unit root and stationary tests, analyze the small-sample properties of some of the tests-statistics, explore encompassing tests and Bayesian odds ratios to ascertain if the more appropriate VAR model is the one in which hours per capita enter in levels or first-differences. The evidence gathered is in support of hours being stationary, which leads to the conclusion that per capita hours worked rise after a technology shock in the euro area. As for the responses of the remaining variables, our results are in line with the bulk of the literature.
College Major Choice for Students of Color: Toward a Model of Recruitment for the Agricultural Education Profession.

The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of the reasons students, identifying as non– White, made the decision to pursue a career in agricultural education. This phenomenological study allowed the researchers to obtain the overall phenomenon of the thought processes that encompass decisions of students of color when selecting an academic major in college. Participants described having external and internal value orientations toward college major choice. When a value orientation increased toward a major prior to college, participants tended to be more apt to pursue a specific degree program. It was concluded that in addition to particular value orientations, distinct barriers to the decision–making process also inhibit the choice of agricultural education .
Oestrogen Receptor β Contributes to the Transient Sex Difference in Tyrosine Hydroxylase Expression in the Mouse Locus Coeruleus

Oestrogen receptors (ERs) are important for sexual differentiation of the brain. Previous studies in rats have reported that the locus coeruleus (LC), a catecholaminergic nucleus in the brain stem, is sexually dimorphic such that females have more neurones than males. We hypothesised that ERs may be important for sexual differentiation of this nucleus in mice. Because previous studies reported conflicting results regarding ER protein expression in the mouse LC, we evaluated ERα and ERβ gene expression by in situ hybridisation and the real‐time reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction. We demonstrated that both ERα and ERβ mRNAs are present in tyrosine hydroxylase‐immunoreactive (TH‐ir) cells in the male LC. In the female LC, ERα mRNA is present at levels similar to males, whereas ERβ mRNA expression is significantly lower than in males. Similar to rats, male mice have fewer TH‐ir cells in the LC than females at 60 days after birth, but the difference is absent at 120 days after birth when females exhibit a similar reduction in TH‐ir cells. The transient sex difference is ERβ‐dependent because is it absent in ERβ knockout mice, and is due to regulation of TH expression and not from death of TH‐ir cells. Testicular hormones produced at adolescence are necessary for the regulation of TH expression in the male LC because orchidectomy of pre‐pubertal males prevented the decrease in TH‐ir cells, whereas treatment of gonadectomised males with testosterone or its metabolite, 5α‐androstan‐3β,17β‐diol, restored the intact male phenotype. Overall, these studies indicate that ERβ is important in regulating TH expression in the mouse LC.
Cultural differences in electronic marketplaces

The development of Internet has fostered giant online customer to customer (C2C) marketplaces operating globally. Because of internetpsilas uniformity and standardization, will consumers demonstrate similar behaviours in the uniform platform? From national and cultural perspectives, we attempt to investigate eBaypsilas mechanisms and userspsila habits of using a similar platform by observing the transaction of eBay in the United States, France and China. Based on data of national transactions and reputation profiles of sellers gathered from eBay.com, eBay.fr and eBay.com. cn, our empirical study provides a comprehensive comparison of cultural behavioral aspects about the trading process as well as the influence of eBaypsilas reputation management system on pricing in these three different countries, and confirms the preliminary remarks about the national C2C online markets and previous assumptions about cultural behavioral particularities.
International civic and citizenship education study : assessment framework

The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, known as IEA, is an independent, international consortium of national research institutions and governmental research agencies, with headquarters in Amsterdam. Its primary purpose is to conduct large-scale comparative studies of educational achievement with the aim of gaining more in-depth understanding of the effects of policies and practices within and across systems of education.
International Risk Sharing and Economic Growth

International risk-sharing which diversifies away income risk will reduced saving, with constant relative risk aversion. It growth arises from the external effects of human capital accumulation then reducing saving will reduced growth. Welfare also may fall with risk-sharing, because endogenous growth with external effects of capital accumulation typically implies a competitive equilibrium growth rate already less than the optimal growth rate. We demonstrate these results in standard, representative-agent and overlapping-generations economies. In the same economies diversifying away rate-of-return risk also will reduce saving and growth rates if relative risk aversion exceeds one.
Pulmonary Immunotoxic Potentials of Metals Are Governed by Select Physicochemical Properties: Chromium Agents

Increasing the understanding of how metal ions/complexes react in situ will allow for the improved specificity and controlled toxicity of novel synthetic metallocompounds that will be used as inhaled diagnostics or therapeutics. Our previous work showed that inhalation of select metals (e.g., chromium, vanadium, nickel, iron) caused alterations in lung immune cell function and in local bacterial resistance. The data also suggested that variations in the degree of immuno-modulation induced were not solely dependent on the amount of metal deposited in the lung, but also on the specific compound. If specificity governs immunomodulatory potential, it follows that physicochemical properties inherent to the metal may have a role in the elicited effects. We hypothesize that major determinants of any metal compound's immunomodulatory potential in situ are its redox behavior, valency, and/or solubility. Using changes in local bacterial resistance as an endpoint, differences in immunotoxic potential in the lungs were quantified for a range of chromium agents (insoluble calcium chromate(VI), and soluble sodium chromate(VI), potassium bis(dipicolinato)chromate(III) and sodium bis(dipicolinato)chromate(II)). Results indicated that among the latter three forms of Cr, strongly oxidizing hexavalent Cr (Cr[VI]) had the greatest impact on resistance, while reducing divalent and fairly unreactive trivalent forms of Cr had no effect at an equal exposure level (i.e., 100 μg Cr/m3, 5 hr/d, for 5 d). Insoluble Cr(VI) had a greater effect than its soluble form. When data was analyzed in the context of pre-infection lung Cr burdens, it was seen that immunomodulatory potentials for both Cr(VI) agents did not differ significantly; however, complexes with different oxidation states did induce varying responses, suggesting that differences in potential might be attributed to redox behavior. From this it was concluded that for Cr, certain physicochemical properties are likely more important to any in situ pulmonary immunotoxicity than others (i.e., redox behavior is more critical than solubility). Our findings, in part, will help provide a basis for understanding why certain metals could be a greater health risk than others, even when encountered in equal amounts. This, in turn, will help researchers in the design of inhalable diagnostic/therapeutic metallopharmaceuticals by pre-empting the selection of certain metal ions/complexes for potential use in these products.
GENETIC DRIFT WITHIN A PROTECTED POLYMORPHISM: ENIGMATIC VARIATION IN COLOR-MORPH FREQUENCIES IN THE CANDY-STRIPE SPIDER, ENOPLOGNATHA OVATA

Abstract The candy-stripe spider, Enoplognatha ovata, exhibits a striking color polymorphism comprising three morphs. A number of lines of evidence strongly suggest that this polymorphism is maintained by natural selection: its presence in a sister species, E. latimana; the physical nature of the variation; the virtual lack of monomorphic populations; the highly consistent rank-order of morphs within populations; and the presence of large-scale clines associated with climatic variables. However, the absence of selection is equally strongly suggested by very local surveys of morph frequencies over space and time, perturbation experiments, and a variance in morph frequency between populations that is virtually independent of spatial scale. In addition, local spatial patterns in one study site (Nidderdale, Yorkshire, England) have been explained in terms of intermittent drift over half a century ago, a hypothesis supported here by the distributions of four other genetic markers (two allozyme and two visible polymorphisms). A heuristic model is suggested that reconciles these apparently contradictory messages regarding the importance of drift and selection in this system. It is proposed that when allele frequencies of the color morph redimita lie between approximately 0.05 and 0.3, the Δq on q plot is very shallow, so that within this region, where the majority of populations lie, selection is weak and drift is the major force determining local morph frequencies. However, outside this range of frequencies, powerful selection acts to protect the polymorphism. This model may apply to polymorphisms in other species and explain why evidence of selection in natural populations is often elusive.
An in vitro comparison of marginal microleakage of alternative restorative treatment and conventional glass ionomer restorations in extracted permanent molars.

PURPOSE The objective of this study was to compare the marginal leakage of cervical restorations made using alternative restorative treatment (ART) and conventional glass ionomer restorations. METHODS Sixteen permanent maxillary and mandibular first and second molars extracted for periodontal reasons with Class V carious dentin on the buccal surfaces were prepared using ART while a second set of 29 noncarious molars had Class V preparations made with a high-speed handpiece. The occlusal margin was located in the enamel, and the gingival margin was located in the dentin/cementum. All teeth were restored with glass ionomer cement (GIC). The teeth were thermally stressed for 300 cycles and stained with methylene blue. Samples were sectioned and evaluated for microleakage. RESULTS One-way analysis of variance on ranks revealed no significant difference in leakage at both the dentin and enamel margins between the conventional and ART groups. The microleakage at the dentin margin, however, was significantly greater (P < .001) than at the enamel margins in the conventional group. CONCLUSION Alternative restorative treatment with GIC provides enamel and dentin margins that show comparable marginal leakage to conventionally restored permanent teeth. For the conventional restorations, leakage at the dentin margins occurs to a significantly higher extent than at the enamel margins.
Family size and the education of children in the context of rapid fertility decline

Family planning programs have caused a substantial decline in fertility in Thailand in the last 20 years. At the same time a steady increase in the educational level of children has occurred. Recent surveys were taken to gain information on family size in relation to the educational level of the children focussing on attendance of lower and upper secondary schools. Results show that males were more likely to continue to secondary schools which is in agreement with the educational desires of the parents. The strongest factors determining the educational level of children is the socioeconomic and educational status of the parents. The surveys show that as family size increases especially over 5 children the likelihood of the children staying is school drops dramatically. Parents educational level seems to be the next most important factor with a positive correlation to the childs educational level. The cost of education is the responsibility of the parents which is why family size is important; while most parents surveyed feel advanced education is necessary for the children to make a better living they may not be in an economic situation to provide it. The data shows that the number of children continuing from lower secondary school to upper secondary school is in agreement with the number expected to continue by the parents. About 33% were expected to continue and 35% actually did continue to lower secondary school from primary school; 17% were expected to go on to upper secondary school and 24% did continue.