Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancing ecosystem services with no-till

Abstract Ecosystem functions and services provided by soils depend on land use and management. The objective of this article is to review and synthesize relevant information on the impacts of no-till (NT) management of croplands on ecosystem functions and services. Sustainable management of soil through NT involves: (i) replacing what is removed, (ii) restoring what has been degraded, and (iii) minimizing on-site and off-site effects. Despite its merits, NT is adopted on merely ∼9% of the 1.5 billion ha of global arable land area. Soil's ecosystem services depend on the natural capital (soil organic matter and clay contents, soil depth and water retention capacity) and its management. Soil management in various agro-ecosystems to enhance food production has some trade-offs/disservices (i.e., decline in biodiversity, accelerated erosion and non-point source pollution), which must be minimized by further developing agricultural complexity to mimic natural ecosystems. However, adoption of NT accentuates many ecosystem services: carbon sequestration, biodiversity, elemental cycling, and resilience to natural and anthropogenic perturbations, all of which can affect food security. Links exist among diverse ecosystem services, such that managing one can adversely impact others. For example, increasing agronomic production can reduce biodiversity and deplete soil organic carbon (SOC), harvesting crop residues for cellulosic ethanol can reduce SOC, etc. Undervaluing ecosystem services can jeopardize finite soil resources and aggravate disservices. Adoption of recommended management practices can be promoted through payments for ecosystem services by a market-based approach so that risks of disservices and negative costs can be reduced either through direct economic incentives or as performance payments.
Danish VISA‐A questionnaire with validation and reliability testing for Danish‐speaking Achilles tendinopathy patients

The VISA‐A questionnaire has proven to be a valid and reliable tool for assessing severity of Achilles tendinopathy (AT). The aim was to translate and cross‐culturally adapt the VISA‐A questionnaire for a Danish‐speaking AT population, and subsequently perform validity and reliability tests. Translation and following cross‐cultural adaptation was performed as translation, synthesis, reverse translation, expert review, and pretesting. The final Danish version (VISA‐A‐DK) was tested for reliability on healthy controls (n = 75) and patients (n = 36). Tests for internal consistency, validity, and structure were performed on 71 patients. VISA‐A‐DK showed good reliability for patients (r = 0.80 ICC = 0.79) and healthy individuals (r = 0.98 ICC = 0.97). Internal consistency was 0.73 (Cronbach's alpha). The mean VISA‐A‐DK score in AT patients was 51 [47–55]. This was significantly lower than healthy controls with a score of 93 (90–95). Criterion validity was considered good when comparing the scores of the Danish version with the original version in both healthy individuals and patients. VISA‐A‐DK is a valid and reliable instrument and has shown compatible to the original version in assessment of AT patients. VISA‐A‐DK is a useful tool in the assessment of AT, both in research and in a clinical setting.
A Force Compensation Approach Toward Divergence of Hardware-in-the-Loop Contact Simulation System for Damped Elastic Contact

The simulation of contact process of flying objects in space is important for many space missions. The hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation is an attractive approach because it integrates the fidelity of physical simulation and the flexibility of numerical simulation. But the HIL contact simulation is divergent due to the time delay, e.g., the dynamic response delay and the force measurement delay. In this study, a force compensation approach is proposed toward the HIL simulation divergence problem for the damped and elastic contact. The idea is to make the compensated force close to the ideal force corresponding to the numerical position computed from the dynamics model of flying objects. The approach includes the phase lead based force compensation for the force measurement delay, and the response error based force compensation for the dynamic response delay of the motion simulator. From simulations and experiments, it is shown that the proposed approach can effectively and satisfactorily compensate the simulation divergence.
Discount strategies for one-time-only sales

Inventory clearing sales, especially in the case of highly competitive, established products, are sometimes accompanied by temporary discounts in the purchase price, to encourage customers to place orders larger than usual. This paper presents a generalized model of this temporary price discount problem in which explicit recognition is given to widely used variations (i) in the length of the grace period within which prospective buyers may place the discounted order; (ii) in the size of the order needed to qualify for the discounts; and (iii) in the portion of the order eligible for the discount.
The Role of Care Location in Diagnosis and Treatment of Pediatric Psychosocial Conditions

ABSTRACT. Racial differences in diagnosis and treatment of psychosocial conditions have been well documented. It is unclear if these differences represent variance in prevalence or are actually disparities in care driven by social factors, income-related differences, or differences in the actual location of care. We used 4 years of National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys as source for data on visits to private offices and hospital-based clinics. In addition to the standard practice of combining surveys across years, we used a "supersurvey" approach to combining the 2 distinct surveys. In our roughly 20,000 sampled visits, we confirmed the higher concentration of low-income children in visits to hospital-based clinics (p <.001), but saw no significant racial difference (p =.104). After controlling for race, income, and other demographics, we found that visits to hospital-based clinics were significantly more likely to include a diagnosis of depression (odds ratio [OR], 4.4; p =.011), but that there was no statistically significant difference in other psychosocial diagnoses. Once a diagnosis is made, there is no evidence of differences in treatment or follow-up between office-based or hospital clinic-based providers. Our analyses support previously gathered evidence for differences in economic status of the clientele of private offices and hospital-based clinics. We surprisingly found visits to clinics to be more likely to include a depression diagnosis, but this may be an artifact of the data reflecting visits rather than patients. We found no evidence that treatment or follow-up is different for the disadvantaged who use clinics rather than private offices.
The impact of idiosyncratic risk on accrual management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to add an important new dimension to the earnings management literature by establishing a link between idiosyncratic risk and the degree of accrual management. Design/methodology/approach Based on a comprehensive sample of 44,599 firm-year observations during the period spanning 1987-2009, the study offers robust empirical evidence of the importance of firm-specific idiosyncratic volatility as a determinant of earnings manipulation. The authors use standard measures of earnings management and idiosyncratic volatility. The authors test the hypotheses with robust econometrics techniques. Findings The authors document a strong positive relationship between idiosyncratic risk and accruals management. Further, the authors find a positive association between residual volatility and discretionary accruals whether accruals are income inflationary or income deflationary. The findings are robust to alternate idiosyncratic risk proxies and variables associated with earnings management. Originality/value Overall, the knowledge derived from this study provides additional tools to assess the degree of earnings management by firms, and hence the quality of the financial reporting. Thus the findings will enable standard setters, financial market regulators, analysts, and investors to make more informed legislative, regulatory, resource allocation, and investment decisions.
Using Prospect Theory to Investigate Decision-Making Bias within an Information Security Context

Abstract : Information security is an issue that has increased in importance over the past decade. In this time both practitioner and academic circles have researched and developed practices and process to more effectively handle information security. Even with growth in these areas there has been little research conducted into how decision makers actually behave. This is problematic because decision makers in the Department of Defense have been observed exhibiting risk seeking behavior when making information security decisions that seemingly violate accepted norms. There are presently no models in the literature that provide sufficient insight into this phenomenon. This study used Prospect Theory as a framework to develop a survey in an effort to obtain insight into how decision makers actually behave while making information security decisions. The survey was distributed to Majors in the Air Force who represented likely future information security decision makers. The results of the study were mixed, showing that prospect theory had only limited explanatory power in this context. The most significant finding showed that negatively connotated decision frames result in significantly more risk seeking behavior. These results provide insight into decision maker behavior and highlight the fact that there are biases in information security decision making.
Being a Successful Professional: : An Exploration of Who Makes Partner in the Big 4

Accepted by Yves Gendron. We would like to thank seminar participants at both the United Arab Emirates University and Newcastle University for comments on previous versions of this paper. Additionally, Michel Magnan and Glenn Rioulx were both particularly helpful in facilitating interviews for the Canadian branch of the study, as well as in offering general advice at the outset. The financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada is also warmly acknowledged. The detailed comments offered on each of the paper's various iterations by Yves Gendron and two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated. Any remaining errors are our own.
Relationships of retinal vessel diameters with optic disc, macular and retinal nerve fiber layer parameters in 6-year-old children.

PURPOSE To describe the normal anatomic relationships of retinal vessel diameters with optic disc, macula, and retinal nerve fiber layer parameters in young children. METHODS This was a population-based, cross-sectional study of 1204 healthy children 6 years of age who were participating in the Sydney Childhood Eye Study. Retinal arteriolar and venular diameters were measured from fundus photographs using standardized computer-based methods. Optical coherence tomography was performed to obtain measurements of the optic disc, macula, and retinal nerve fiber layer parameters. RESULTS In multivariate analyses, each standard deviation (SD) decrease in optic disc area was associated with a 0.14-pixel decrease (P = 0.05) in arteriolar diameter and a 0.31-pixel decrease (P < 0.01) in venular diameter. Each SD decrease in optic cup area was associated with a 0.15-pixel decrease (P = 0.05) in arteriolar diameter and a 0.43-pixel decrease (P < 0.01) in venular diameter. Each SD decrease in macular (inner/outer) thickness or volume was associated with a 0.25- to 0.39-pixel decrease (P < 0.01) in arteriolar diameter and a 0.36- to 0.71-pixel decrease (P < 0.01) in venular diameter, and each SD decrease in retinal nerve fiber layer thickness was associated with a 0.62-pixel decrease (P < 0.01) in arteriolar diameter and a 0.99-pixel decrease (P < 0.01) in venular diameter. CONCLUSIONS Children's eyes with a smaller optic disc, thinner macula, and thinner retinal nerve fiber layer have narrower retinal vessels. These anatomic relationships may provide new insights into the vascular etiology of various ocular diseases.
Lack of difference in iron status assessed by soluble transferrin receptor between children with cerebral malaria and those with non-cerebral malaria.

We conducted this study to determine whether children with cerebral malaria are less likely to have tissue iron deficiency than those with non-cerebral malaria. Iron status was assessed by soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR), serum ferritin, and haemoglobin in 44 Zaïrian children: 15 with cerebral malaria, 14 with non-cerebral malaria, and 15 without malaria (age range 0.5-16 years). Although there was no significant difference in the mean concentrations of sTfR, serum ferritin, or haemoglobin between either group of patients, a higher percentage of children with cerebral malaria (27 per cent) than those with non-cerebral malaria (14 per cent) or controls (7%) had sTfR levels above 7.3 mg/l (suggestive of tissue iron deficiency). A higher percentage of children with cerebral malaria (40 per cent) than with non-cerebral malaria (29 per cent) or controls (20 per cent) also had either serum ferritin < 100 micrograms/l and inflammation or sTfR > 7.3 mg/l or both. The data suggest that children with cerebral malaria are as likely to have tissue iron deficiency as those with non-cerebral malaria.
Brief Psychotherapy of Personality Disorders

Thirty-two patients with personality disorder diagnoses were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions that vary on several techniques of brief dynamic psychotherapy. Seventeen patients constituted a waiting list control group. The two brief psychotherapies showed significant improvement on target complaints, SCL-90, and Social Adjustment Scale-SR compared with the control subjects. The two therapy groups were similar in overall outcome but showed interesting differences on several subscale measures. Process measurements of videotaped sessions revealed significant variations in frequencies of therapist interventions across the two treatment conditions, which validated planned differences in the treatment techniques.
Did the SEC Impact Banks’ Loan Loss Reserve Policies and Their Informativeness?

During the late 1990s, the SEC alleged that banks were overstating loan loss allowances to establish cookie jar reserves. Their intervention in bank accounting culminated in 2001 with new guidance (SAB 102) designed to improve financial reporting quality. We show that banks' allowance estimation changed in response to the SEC's intervention. While allowance informativeness (as proxied by the ability to explain future losses) improved for Strong Banks, informativeness declined for Weak Banks whose incentives are to understate allowances. Our results help to explain why some (Weak) banks delayed loss recognition during the recent financial crisis.
Analysis of a time series of household expenditure surveys for India

ECONOMETRIC studies of household expenditure occupy an important place in government policy formulation with estimates of expenditure and price elasticity proving useful in several planning models. Although the empirical literature is large, relatively few studies have considered the simultaneous impact of total expenditure, price and family size on household demand using time series of budget data and within a framework that is consistent with economic theory. Weisskoff (1971) and, more recently, Sener (1977) have tested and rejected the hypothesis of negligible price effects and established the need to incorporate price and size variables in any meaningful study of expenditure patterns in developing countries. The limited literature on estimation of demand systems from budget data includes Tsujimura and Sato (1964) on Japan, Bhattacharya (1967) and Joseph (1968) on India and, recently, Muellbauer (1977) and Pollak and Wales (1978) on British data. The present exercise differs from the above in investigating the impact on budget share, rather than quantities, and in using a variant of a recent model (AIDS)' that is consistent with economic theory without requiring additive separability of the utility function. The model is introduced by Deaton and Muellbauer (1978). The principal objectives of our exercise include (a) extension of the AIDS model by including family size and applying it to Indian budget data to estimate expenditure, price and size elasticities, (b) testing the hypotheses of (i) no price effects, (ii) no economies of household size, (iii) no money illusion, and (c) comparison of the Indian expenditure pattern with those of other developing economies. The AIDS in its micro version and its adaptation for use on the published data is discussed in section II, and the data are described in section III. Section IV presents the results and we end with the concluding note of section V.
Electoral Equilibrium under Alternative Voting Institutions

This paper investigates the nature of multicandidate electoral equilibria under three different classes of single-ballot-single-winner voting systems: (1) scoring rules (including the plurality rule, Borda's method of marks, and negative voting); (2) Condorcet completion procedures; and (3) multiple vote procedures (including approval voting). Some of the key findings of the paper are that (1) multicandidate equilibria under the plurality rule must be noncentrist (Theorem 1); (2) in an election held under any Condorcet procedure, candidates have a dominant strategy to adopt the median voter's position (Theorem 4); (3) there is a set of nontrivial voting methods for which equilibria routinely exist regardless of the dimensionality of the policy space; and (4) the plurality rule is alone among commonly discussed voting procedures in not having centrist multicandidate equilibria.
Modeling goes to Hollywood: predicting individual differences in movie enjoyment

Consumer behavior researchers are getting more interested in the experiential aspect of consumption, which focuses on the fun and enjoyment that consumers derive from hedonic experiences. We build upon the experiential view of consumer behavior, and present an innovative modeling approach to studying the dynamics of hedonic consumption experiences. We develop a conceptual framework for the enjoyment of a hedonic experience, in which we propose that the enjoyment of the experience is an outcome of the dynamic interaction between stable individual difference factors, temporary moods, and the emotional content of the experience. We present an application of the conceptual framework in the context of a movie viewing experience. We model the interaction between the temporary moods of an individual and the emotional content of the movie as a stochastic process. This interaction determines the individual's instantaneous emotional states. We develop analytical expressions for the dynamic evolution of the probability distribution of the levels of achieved emotional stimulation, and, through individual difference factors, the expected enjoyment. All measurements are taken prior to watching the movie. We use these measurements to predict individual differences in the ex-post enjoyment of the movie. We present an empirical test of the movie enjoyment model (ENJMOD), and find encouraging results at the individual and segment level. We discuss the implications of our modeling approach for the segmentation and testing of movies, and for the prediction of consumer response to similar experiential products.
Incremental value of cell block preparations over conventional smears alone in the evaluation of EUS-FNA for pancreatic masses.

BACKGROUND/AIMS The effectiveness of endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) has been established for a definite pathological diagnosis of pancreatic solid masses. We investigated the usefulness of cell block preparations in EUS-FNA, by evaluating the added value of cell block preparations over conventional smears alone. METHODOLOGY Between March 2011 and June 2013, 61 patients were retrospectively evaluated who underwent EUS-FNA for pancreatic solid masses. Diagnostic values for diagnosing pancreatic malignancy were compared for a combination of the conventional smear and cell block (CSCB) and the conventional smear alone (CS). RESULTS The addition of the cell block technique increased the sensitivity of conventional smear for diagnosing the pancreatic malignancy from 79% (CS) to 90% (CSCB, p=0.0313) and the accuracy from 81% to 91% (p=0.0313). The specificity and positive predictive value were 100% in both methods. The negative predictive value was increased from 33% (CS) to 50% (CSCB), but this difference was not statistically significant (p=0.0833). CONCLUSION The addition of the cell block method after a conventional smear may increase the sensitivity and negative predictive value for diagnosing the pancreatic malignancy in patients with pancreatic masses who undergo EUS-FNA. Further study may be warranted to determine whether the cell block method can replace the conventional smear.
The effects of state regulations on boating accidents and fatalities

Various federal and state regulations on recreational boating were enacted with the intention of reducing recreational boating accidents and fatalities. Based on multivariate analysis of state regulations on recreational boating and boating statistics from 1990 to 1994, this study indicates that laws and educational programmes focusing on youths are effective in reducing boating accidents and fatalities. The empirical results suggest that the minimum age requirement for boat operators is a significant factor in reducing boating accidents and fatalities. Furthermore, states which offer boating safety classes as part of their public school curriculum have significantly less boating accidents than states which do not. On the other hand implied consent laws and mandatory education for boat operators are not statistically significant factors in reducing boating accidents and fatalities. Mandatory wearing of personal floating devices may have offsetting effects on boating by inducing more ‘driving’ intensity.
Patient-acceptable Symptom State as an Outcome Measure in the Daily Care of Patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis

Objective. We assessed the prevalence of patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), rating their state as acceptable (patient-acceptable symptom state; PASS), among 190 patients with AS seen in daily practice. Factors associated with PASS status and PASS thresholds for outcome measures were also analyzed. Methods. The characteristics of patients with affirmative and negative assignment to PASS were compared. Associated factors were estimated by logistic regression models and PASS thresholds by the 75th percentile and receiver-operating characteristic curve methods. Results. A total of 77% of patients rated their state as acceptable (95% CI 62–91). These patients were taking fewer nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and corticosteroids, practiced more exercise, had less anxiety and depression, and had lower values of all patient-reported outcome measures, physicians’ assessment, AS Disease Activity Score (ASDAS) and C-reactive protein. Lower values of Bath AS Disease Activity Index and physician’s global assessment were independent factors associated with acceptable symptom state. High rates of anxiety and depression were found in patients not in PASS. The thresholds with the 75th percentile approach were 4.55 for the BASDAI and 2.84 for the ASDAS. Fifty-three percent of patients in PASS had a high or very high disease activity state according to ASDAS cutoff values. Conclusion. A high percentage of patients with AS in daily practice declared that their symptom state was acceptable. PASS status correlated with physician global assessment and BASDAI. PASS thresholds for common recommended outcome measures were relatively high and many patients in PASS had unacceptably high disease activity states according to ASDAS. Other factors such as psychological problems may influence a negative PASS state.