Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lessons from European Union Policies for Regional Development

Regional disparities present an ever present development challenge in most countries, especially those with large geographic areas under their jurisdiction. A neglect of these inequities may create the potential for disunity and, in extreme cases, for disintegration. In view of this, most countries actively pursue policies with a view to helping lagging regions catch up with faster growing regions. These policies have at best a mixed record of success. It is therefore useful to discern what type of policies work and why? In this context learning from the experience of the European Union (EU) may be particularly instructive as, over the years, it has provided significant support to assist poorer regions achieve convergence with the richer regions. This paper reviews the impact of EU policies for regional development to draw lessons of interest to other countries pursuing similar goals. The paper concludes that policies that serve to create an internal common market by creating a level playing field that enables poorer regions to integrate with the broader national and global economies have the best potential to advance regional income convergence. In this context, removal of barriers to trade and factor mobility and providing enhanced access to information and technology to the lagging regions should be main policy priorities for regional development.
Risk and Return Dynamics

• A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
How Higher Education Institutions Utilize Social Media

Social media is dramatically changing the way that people communicate and interact online. Several businesses have made it a priority to establish a presence on social media to connect with some of its biggest users: millennials. As social media has gained popularity, higher education institutions all around have begun to establish social media platforms in order to interact with current and prospective students and alumni. This study examined how higher education institutions in the University System of Georgia are utilizing social media and also compared use among the various types of institutions (research, comprehensive, state college and state university). Using long interviews and a content analysis, this study found that higher education institutions understand the importance of using social media however, many are not taking advantage of tools & strategies that can help them succeed. Thesis Mentor:___________________________ Dr. S. Camille Broadway Honors Director:___________________________ Dr. Steven Engel November 2014 Communication Arts Department University Honors Program Georgia Southern University Running head: HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN SOCIAL MEDIA
T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain‐containing molecule 3 on CD14+ monocytes serves as a novel biological marker for diabetes duration in type 2 diabetes mellitus

Type 2 diabetes is a worldwide disease that is associated with increased rates of obesity and reduced physical activity. Obesity‐associated insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes is a disorder in the balance between pro‐inflammatory and anti‐inflammatory signals. T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain‐containing molecule 3 (Tim‐3) has been reported as an important regulatory inflammation molecule, and plays a pivotal role in several inflammation‐related diseases.
Strong confidence intervals for autoregression

In this short note I apply the methodology of game-theoretic probability to calculating non-asymptotic confidence intervals for the coefficient of a simple first order scalar autoregressive model. The most distinctive feature of the proposed procedure is that with high probability it produces confidence intervals that always cover the true parameter value when applied sequentially.
Terrestrial agents in the realm of space storms: Missions study oxygen ions

Observations from two recent space missions, the Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE) and the Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES), demonstrate that magnetospheric O+ ions originating in the ionosphere are important terrestrial agents in geospace. In other words, ionized oxygen escaping from the upper atmosphere can play a critical role in electromagnetic processes in near-Earth space. The missions also demonstrated that the abundance of terrestrial plasma (O+ in particular) in the inner magnetosphere increases quickly, as a quick response of the ionosphere to enhanced geospace activity during magnetic storms and substorms [Daglis and Axford, 1996]. Furthermore, O+ becomes the dominant ion species during the main phase of great magnetic storms [Daglis, 1997]. Great magnetic storms are most remarkable global-scale processes, and they are of particular interest because they often have severe impacts on technological systems.
Competition and convergence in financial markets : the German and Anglo-American models

Section and chapter headings: Preface. Introduction (S.W. Black, M. Moersch). I Who Governs Firms? The changing role of banks and corporate governance in Germany: evolution towards the market? (U. Schroder, A. Schrader). The German system of corporate governance - a model which should not be imitated (E. Wenger, C. Kaserer). Is a supervisory board valuable? the French evidence (Gang Shyy, V. Vijayraghavan). II Financial Constraints and Investment Behavior. German investment financing: an international comparison (J. Corbett, T. Jenkinson). Investment, liquidity constraints, and bank relationships: evidence from German manufacturing firms (J.A. Elston). Financial structure, investment and economic growth in OECD countries (S.W. Black, M. Moersch). III Comparing Financial Systems and Regulatory Regimes. Universal versus specialized banks (A. Steinherr). Convergence of financial systems and regulatory policy challenges in Europe and in the United States (C. Dziobek, J.R. Garrett). The management of financial risks at German nonfinancial firms: the cast of metallgesellschaft (A.B. Frankel, D.E. Palmer). IV European Monetary Unification. Is a 2-speed system in Europe the answer to the conflict between the German and the Anglo-Saxon models of monetary control? (M. Demertzis et al.). Monetary integration between economies with different financial structures (S. Collignon). V Financial Structure for Transition Economies. Towards universal banking - risks and benefits for transition economies (C.M. Buch). Financial integration in North America and Europe among neighboring countries at different stages of development (G.M. von Furstenberg, B. Hofer). Index.
Performance for the Masses: Experiments with A Web Based Architecture to Harness Volunteer Resources for Low Cost Distributed Evolutionary Computation

Using volunteer's browsers as a computing resource presents several advantages, but it remains a challenge to fully harness the browser's capabilities and to model the user's behavior so that those capabilities can be leveraged optimally. These are the objectives of this paper, where we present the results of several evolutionary computation experiments with different implementations of a volunteer computing framework called NodIO, designed to be easily deployable on freely available cloud resources. We use different implementations to find out which one is able to get the user to lend more computing cycles and test different problems to check the influence it has on said performance, as measured by the time needed to find a solution, but also by the number of users engaged. From these experiments we can already draw some conclusions, besides the fact that volunteer computing can be a valuable computing resource and that it is essential to be as open as possible with software and data: the user has to be kept engaged to obtain as many computing cycles as possible, the client has to be built to use the computer capabilities fully, and, finally, that the user contributions follow a common statistical distribution.
The Long-Run Relationship Between Commerce And Sustainable Development In Baltic And Central And Eastern European Countries

The paper investigates the long-run relationship between commerce intensity and a measure of sustainable development for ten ex-communist countries that have recently joined the EU. The originality of this paper consists in applying the co-integration testing techniques for panel data regarding commerce and the “authentic” savings rate, an indicator of sustainable development, which determines the productive base that will be inherited by future generations. Econometric tests suggest a negative long-run relationship between commerce intensity and sustainable development. This result is in agreement with conclusions of other studies that have documented, in the region, an economic growth fueled by the adoption of unsustainable western consumption ideals, a low public consciousness about ecological values and weak institutions dealing with environmental issues at both government and civil society level. The negative correlation that was found could be a symptom for an evolution stage towards an economic and social maturity where commerce expansion is synchronized with accumulation of wealth that will be inherited by future generations.
ATM gene variants in patients with idiopathic perifoveal telangiectasia.

PURPOSE To investigate the prevalence of sequence variants in the ATM gene and to determine the frequency of major age-related macular degeneration (AMD)-associated variants in CFH, CFB, and 10q26 loci in patients with idiopathic perifoveal telangiectasia (IPT). METHODS Thirty patients with diagnoses of IPT underwent standard ophthalmologic evaluation that included visual acuity testing, fundus photography, and fluorescein angiography. DNA was screened for variations in the ATM gene by a combination of denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography and direct sequencing. Major AMD-associated alleles in CFH, CFB, and 10q loci were screened by PCR-restriction fragment-length polymorphism. RESULTS Nineteen female and 11 male patients (average age, 59 years) with a median visual acuity of 20/50 were evaluated. Six patients were of Asian-Indian origin, one was Hispanic, and 23 were of European-American ancestry. Nine of 30 (30%) patients had diabetes mellitus, 18 of 30 (60%) patients had hypertension, and 12 of 30 (40%) patients had a history of smoking. Screening of the ATM gene revealed a null allele in 2 of 23 (8.7%) patients of European ancestry, previously disease-associated missense alleles in 4 of 23 (17.4%) patients, and common missense alleles in 7 of 23 (30.4%) patients. No variants were identified in the ATM gene in patients of Asian or Hispanic origin. Frequencies of major AMD-associated alleles in CFH, CFB, and 10q loci in the IPT cohort were similar to those in the ethnically matched general population. CONCLUSIONS At least 26%, and maybe up to 57%, of IPT patients of European-American descent carried possibly disease-associated ATM alleles. Vascular risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, and smoking may be associated with the pathogenesis of the disease.
Implementation of Evolutionary Algorithms for Deep Architectures

Deep learning is becoming an increasingly interesting and powerful machine learning method with successful applications in many domains, such as natural language processing, image recognition, and hand-written character recognition. Despite of its eminent success, limitations of traditional learning approach may still prevent deep learning from achieving a wide range of realistic learning tasks. Due to the flexibility and proven effectiveness of evolutionary learning techniques, they may therefore play a crucial role towards unleashing the full potential of deep learning in practice. Unfortunately, many researchers with a strong background on evolutionary computation are not fully aware of the stateof-the-art research on deep learning. To close this knowledge gap and to promote the research on evolutionary inspired deep learning techniques, this paper presents a comprehensive review of the latest deep architectures and surveys important evolutionary algorithms that can potentially be explored for training these deep architectures. Index terms — Deep Architectures, Deep Learning, Evolutionary Algorithms
Query-by-Example Music Information Retrieval by Score-Informed Source Separation and Remixing Technologies

We describe a novel query-by-example (QBE) approach in music information retrieval that allows a user to customize query examples by directly modifying the volume of different instrument parts. The underlying hypothesis of this approach is that the musical mood of retrieved results changes in relation to the volume balance of different instruments. On the basis of this hypothesis, we aim to clarify the relationship between the change in the volume balance of a query and the genre of the retrieved pieces, called genre classification shift. Such an understanding would allow us to instruct users in how to generate alternative queries without finding other appropriate pieces. Our QBE system first separates all instrument parts from the audio signal of a piece with the help of its musical score, and then it allows users remix these parts to change the acoustic features that represent the musical mood of the piece. Experimental results showed that the genre classification shift was actually caused by the volume change in the vocal, guitar, and drum parts.
Trade and the Poor: The Impact of International Trade on Developing Countries

FOREWORD vii 1. Introduction: why countries trade 1 2. Trade effects 17 3. Primary commodities: the lifeblood drains away 34 4. Manufactured goods: the South's obstacle course 54 5. Trade in services 71 6. Transnationals: agents of trade 86 7. Transnationals: agents of death? 104 8. Finance, debt and trade 119 9. International trade organizations 131 10. Alternative trade: coming direct 149 11. South-South trade and producer co-operation 160 APPENDIX 1 Selected statistics 178 APPENDIX 2 Armaments 184 APPENDIX 3 ATOs 188 NOTES 191 BIBLIOGRAPHY 202 INDEX 206
Einstellungen Zum Israelisch-palästinensischen Konflikt Attitudes toward the Israeli-palestinian Conflict Sozial Geteilte Repräsentationen Des Israel-palästina-konflikts: Eine Exploration Unter Aussenstehenden Socially Shared Representations of the Israel-palestine Conflict: an Exploration among Con

Freie Beiträge Non-thematic contributions Irina Volf Hizb ut-Tahrir in der Presse II: Eine Exploration der Unterschiede zwischen akademischen Diskursen und redaktionellen Standpunkten in Europa and Zentralasien Hizb ut-Tahrir in the press II: Exploring discrepancies between academic discourses and editorial choices in Europe and Central Asia Dokumentation Documentation Daniel Bar-Tal: "Love your neighbor as yourself" Documentation of an open letter by Prof. circulated an open letter, which is documented in the present edition of conflict & communication online. In this letter, Bar-Tal, considered one of the internationally leading political psychologists, formulated an urgent appeal to end the Israeli Occupartheid policy, which not only continues Israeli injustice to the Palestinians, but also threatens to destroy Israel from within. Since then, everything has gotten even worse: a two-state solution for Israel/Palestine can only bring about peace, if a peace treaty that guarantees both states' right to exist is supported by Hamas as well. The reconciliation between Hamas and the PLO and the establishment of a unity government in the Palestinian territories in spring 2014 could have been understood by Netanyahu as a chance to move toward this goal. Instead he reacted by breaking off peace negotiations. The kidnapping and murder of three Talmud students by Hamas members, the brutal act of revenge, in which a Palestinian youth was burned alive, the Gaza war, which cost the lives of 2200 Palestinians (mostly civilians) and 70 Israelis, a wave of spontaneous and improvised attacks in Jerusalem in fall 2014 were the stations of the renewed outbreak of violence, from which Israeli author Yali Sobol draws the lesson that terror cannot be ended by military means: " The best way to eliminate this threat would be a political agreement that quells the hatred on both sides – an historical compromise that removes or at least reduces the incentives for such acts. Unfortunately, it seems that currently many Israelis – including a large share of the political elite – consider this viewpoint to be naïve in the best case and treasonous in the worst " (in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Dec. 1, 2014). As well in Switzerland, Germany and the rest of Europe, voices calling for a change in Israeli policy are all too quickly accused of anti-Semitism. A reproach that one should not take lightly, particularly since there really are more than a few anti-Semites, whose (apparent) partisanship for the Palestinian people in the end merely serves …
Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth in Nigeria: Further Evidence

This paper investigated the relationship between remittances and economic growth in Nigeria, using an error correction modeling approach for the period 1981 to 2011. Our result revealed that remittances positively impact on the economic growth of Nigeria. We have found that a 1 percent increase in remittances would lead to a 0.19 percent increase in the RGDP in the long run. However, remittances show a significant negative relationship with output in the short run. Also, while foreign aid as an external source of capital can have both short and long term significant influence on economic growth in Nigeria, its counterpart FDI can only exert positive impact on RGDP in the short run. Our result also affirmed the significant positive role of trade in promoting economic growth, suggesting that the more open the economy, the more stimuli it has on RGDP both in short run and long run.
Improved survival with ipilimumab in patients with metastatic melanoma.

BACKGROUND An improvement in overall survival among patients with metastatic melanoma has been an elusive goal. In this phase 3 study, ipilimumab--which blocks cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated antigen 4 to potentiate an antitumor T-cell response--administered with or without a glycoprotein 100 (gp100) peptide vaccine was compared with gp100 alone in patients with previously treated metastatic melanoma. METHODS A total of 676 HLA-A*0201-positive patients with unresectable stage III or IV melanoma, whose disease had progressed while they were receiving therapy for metastatic disease, were randomly assigned, in a 3:1:1 ratio, to receive ipilimumab plus gp100 (403 patients), ipilimumab alone (137), or gp100 alone (136). Ipilimumab, at a dose of 3 mg per kilogram of body weight, was administered with or without gp100 every 3 weeks for up to four treatments (induction). Eligible patients could receive reinduction therapy. The primary end point was overall survival. RESULTS The median overall survival was 10.0 months among patients receiving ipilimumab plus gp100, as compared with 6.4 months among patients receiving gp100 alone (hazard ratio for death, 0.68; P<0.001). The median overall survival with ipilimumab alone was 10.1 months (hazard ratio for death in the comparison with gp100 alone, 0.66; P=0.003). No difference in overall survival was detected between the ipilimumab groups (hazard ratio with ipilimumab plus gp100, 1.04; P=0.76). Grade 3 or 4 immune-related adverse events occurred in 10 to 15% of patients treated with ipilimumab and in 3% treated with gp100 alone. There were 14 deaths related to the study drugs (2.1%), and 7 were associated with immune-related adverse events. CONCLUSIONS Ipilimumab, with or without a gp100 peptide vaccine, as compared with gp100 alone, improved overall survival in patients with previously treated metastatic melanoma. Adverse events can be severe, long-lasting, or both, but most are reversible with appropriate treatment. (Funded by Medarex and Bristol-Myers Squibb; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00094653.)
Sustained Release of Antibacterial Lipopeptides from Biodegradable Polymers against Oral Pathogens

The development of antibacterial drugs to overcome various pathogenic species, which inhabit the oral cavity, faces several challenges, such as salivary flow and enzymatic activity that restrict dosage retention. Owing to their amphipathic nature, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) serve as the first line of defense of the innate immune system. The ability to synthesize different types of AMPs enables exploitation of their advantages as alternatives to antibiotics. Sustained release of AMPs incorporated in biodegradable polymers can be advantageous in maintaining high levels of the peptides. In this study, four potent ultra-short lipopeptides, conjugated to an aliphatic acid chain (16C) were incorporated in two different biodegradable polymers: poly (lactic acid co castor oil) (PLACO) and ricinoleic acid-based poly (ester-anhydride) (P(SA-RA)) for sustained release. The lipopeptide and polymer formulations were tested for antibacterial activity during one week, by turbidometric measurements of bacterial outgrowth, anti-biofilm activity by live/dead staining, biocompatibility by hemolysis and XTT colorimetric assays, mode of action by fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) and release profile by a fluorometric assay. The results show that an antibacterial and anti-biofilm effect, as well as membrane disruption, can be achieved by the use of a formulation of lipopeptide incorporated in biodegradable polymer.
Riding the waves of culture : understanding cultural diversity in global business

International management guru, Fons Trompenaar's best-selling Riding the Waves of Culture has become an essential guide for managers and trainers in multinational organizations, as well as anyone who conducts business overseas. This thoroughly revised, second edition, updated to include new case histories and fresh research findings, uses country-by-country graphs, examples, and other comparisons to clearly illustrate how different cultures respond to different management approaches; provides case histories to show how managers have successfully anticipated and mediated difficult and potentially costly dilemmas; and shows how managers can prepare their organizations for the process of internationalization through specific points of intervention.
Metrics for Linking Marketing to Financial Performance

Marketers have been inundated with performance measures that reflect the impact of their marketing expenditures. These measures often reflect impact with the customer or the channel, such as awareness, preference, purchase intent, customer satisfaction and loyalty, share of requirements, shelf space, ACV (all commodity volume), and the like. Unfortunately, these tend to be interim measures and do not reflect the financial impact on the firm. Marketers are being asked to translate marketing performance measures into financial consequences. For example, what is a point of customer satisfaction worth? Pressure is being placed on marketing to justify expenditures and to translate their measures into financial outcomes, which is the language used by the rest of the firm. This paper will explore methods to better link marketing expenditures to financial outcomes. In the process, we discuss both what we know about the linkage between marketing and financial outcomes as well as what remains to be uncovered.