Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can policy follow the dynamics of global innovation platforms

This Think Piece explores how integration into international trade through global networks of production (GPNs) and innovation (GINs) might affect a region’s innovation capacity. As regions across the globe are progressively integrated into those global networks – some certainly more than others – these regions are all faced with a fundamental challenge: How might progressive integration of its firms into GPNs and GINs affect learning, capability development and innovation? Will network integration unlock new sources of industrial innovation? Or will it act as a poisoned chalice that will sap and erode the region’s accumulated capabilities? The paper presents illustrative examples of how “ubiquitous globalization” increases the diversity and complexity of GPNs and GINs, and briefly discusses the underlying systemic pressures and enabling forces. In order to capture the gains for innovation that a region might reap from global network integration, the paper suggests moving from a one-way analysis of the external impacts on a region’s innovation capacity to an analysis of two-way interactions. The paper concludes with Policy Implications and highlights Unresolved Issues for Future Research, including the critically important issues of spillover employment effects and inequality. Overview of topic and why it is important This Think Piece explores how integration into international trade through global networks of production (GPNs) and innovation (GINs) might affect a region’s innovation capacity. Policy debates typically focus on three specific channels through which trade could strengthen a region’s innovation capacity: i) imports, FDI and technology licensing, and ii) learning-by-exporting would both expose the region to foreign technology and intangible knowledge as a source of product and process innovation. In addition, iii) competition may reduce monopoly rents from innovation and create pressure to increase productivity [1]. It is argued that, for these gains from trade to materialize, the following policies must be in place:  Trade liberalization through tariff reduction would lower import prices, improve market access for exporters, and enhance competition.  A business environment that encourages private investment through the provision of “political and macroeconomic stability, quality of regulation”, and the provision of infrastructure, RD senior advisor to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris; research director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California at Berkeley; professor of international business at the Copenhagen Business School; and scientific advisor to governments, private companies, and international institutions.
Circulating tumor cells expressing cancer stem cell marker CD44 as a diagnostic biomarker in patients with gastric cancer

Epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a marker for circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in various types of cancer, while cluster of differentiation 44 (CD44) is a marker for gastric cancer (GC) stem cells. To evaluate the clinical significance of CD44+ CTCs in patients with GC in the present study, the number of EpCAM+CD44+ and EpCAM+CD44− cells were detected in the peripheral blood of 26 GC patients and 12 healthy volunteers using flow cytometry. The number (mean ± standard deviation) of EpCAM+CD44+ cells in the GC patients and healthy volunteers was 69.9±52.0 and 0.91±2.10, respectively (P=0.0001), while that of EpCAM+CD44− cells was 59.1±88.0 and 9.83±9.91, respectively (P=0.0313). The sensitivity and specificity of EpCAM+CD44+ cell detection for the identification of GC patients were 92.3 and 100%, respectively. By contrast, the values of EpCAM+CD44− cell detection were 76.9 and 83.3%, respectively. The number of EpCAM+CD44+ cells in the GC patients was correlated with the disease stage (P=0.0423), the depth of the tumor (P=0.0314) and venous invasion (P=0.0184) in the resected tumor specimens, while the number of EpCAM+CD44− cells did not correlate with any clinicopathological factors. The number of EpCAM+CD44+ cells significantly decreased following surgical resection of the tumor or induction of systemic chemotherapy. Additionally, atypical cells with a high nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio were morphologically detected in the sorted EpCAM+CD44+ cells. These results suggested that CD44+ CTCs, but not CD44− CTCs, reflect the malignant status of the primary tumor in patients with GC, providing a candidate biomarker for diagnosis and treatment response.
Implementation, problems, success and longevity of quality circle programmes: A study of 95 UK organizations

One problem in studying quality circles (QCs) is the shortage of objective measures of success. Another is the fact that many previous studies have been longitudinal but based on only one site. Presents results of a large sample of over 5,000 QCs which capture some longitudinal aspects of quality circle development and relate them to several objective and subjective measures of success. Contrary to previous small, longitudinal studies which have been reported in the literature, this study found no evidence at the level of organizational QC programmes to support the role of top and middle management in QC success, except for the need for management representation on steering committees. Data suggest that organizations with TQM have more successful QC programmes and (weakly) that older QC programmes are more successful.
Too few spots in the cosmic microwave background

We investigate the abundance of large-scale hot and cold spots in the WMAP-5 temperature maps and find considerable discrepancies compared to Gaussian simulations based on the {Lambda}CDM best-fit model. Too few spots are present in the reliably observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) region, i.e., outside the foreground-contaminated parts excluded by the KQ75 mask. Even simulated maps created from the original WMAP-5 estimated multipoles contain more spots than visible in the measured CMB maps. A strong suppression of the lowest multipoles would lead to better agreement. The lack of spots is reflected in a low mean temperature fluctuation on scales of several degrees (4 deg. - 8 deg.), which is only shared by less than 1% (0.16%-0.62%) of Gaussian {Lambda}CDM simulations. After removing the quadrupole, the probabilities change to 2.5%-8.0%. This shows the importance of the anomalously low quadrupole for the statistical significance of the missing spots. We also analyze a possible violation of Gaussianity or statistical isotropy (spots are distributed differently outside and inside the masked region).
Critical success factors of implementation knowledge management process

The success on an organization today lies more on its intellectual — intangible asset rather than its physical assts. This paper focuses on critical success factors of KM process implementation in Jordan pharmaceutical industry, which aim to help in the process of using, sharing practices, creating new knowledge. Questioner was designed and sent to high and middle managers of the important pharmaceutical firms in Jordan to investigate of critical success factors in those firms, in order to improve products, services, communicate and collaborative with these firms. The result lead recommends that Jordan firms require to focusing in organization culture that supported to knowledge sharing, across and among employee/business units. Employees need a strong team culture to adaptation with knowledge mangement process. In addition, firms should compile technology environment coped with changes, challenges in the dynamic business environment to support the KM discipline.
Accounting Conservatism and Firm Investment Efficiency

We argue that conservatism improves investment efficiency. In particular, we predict that it resolves debt-equity conflicts, facilitating a firm׳s access to debt financing and limiting underinvestment. This permits the financing of prudent investments that otherwise might not be pursued. Our empirical results confirm these predictions. We find that more conservative firms invest more and issue more debt in settings prone to underinvestment and that these effects are more pronounced in firms characterized by greater information asymmetries. We also find that conservatism is associated with reduced overinvestment, even for opaque investments such as research and development.
The Effects of Teachers Unions on American Education

The purpose of the present review is to summarize, and attempt to reconcile, the empirical research on the actual impact teachers unions have on American education. To give structure to that effort, this article analyses the unions’ effectiveness in pursuing five of their key objectives: (1) raising their members’ wages, (2) growing their membership, (3) increasing the share of the public school labor force that they represent, (4) precluding pay based on performance or aptitude, and (5) minimizing competition from nonunion shops.
VOTING FOR PUBLIC ALTERNATIVES: SOME NOTES ON MAJORITY RULE

MAJORITY common to voting almost is all an democratic institution co on o lmo t ll democrat c societies, but, as a method of social decision-making, it is vulnerable to attack on several fronts. In this paper I examine some of the well-known shortcomings of majority voting: intransitivity, indecisiveness, and susceptibility to strategic manipulation. Most important, I consider the assertion that majority rule is Pareto inefficient and show that this inefficiency is related to the shape of individuals' utility functions. I also present a result which enables one to predict the direction in which the inefficiency lies. Finally, I show that rank-order voting is likely to improve efficiency. One weakness of majority voting, first enunciated by Condorcet, is its failure, in general, to generate a transitive social ordering of alternatives. Given three alternatives, a, b, and c, a majority of the electorate may prefer a to b and b to c and yet c to a.1 This flaw is far from unique to decision-making by majority rule. As Arrow [1951] has demonstrated, the problem plagues any social choice procedure that satisfies several reasonable conditions. More seriously, majority voting may be non-decisive; a vote may fail to produce a majority winner at all. Non-decisiveness has two possible senses. One is simply that, with more than two candidates on the ballot, none may capture over fifty percent of the vote. Thus, there was concern in the 1968 U.S. Presidential election that George Wallace's presence would prevent either of the real contenders, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, from obtaining a majority. A second interpretation is that no candidate may emerge victorious even in pair-wise competition against the other alternatives. A pair-wise majority winner was presumably not absent in the 1968 election. That is, most likely Nixon would
The Limits of the Market-wide Limits of Arbitrage: Insights from the Dynamics of 100 Anomalies

Are anomalies strongest when limits of arbitrage are widely considered to be greatest? We empirically explore this theoretically deducted prediction. We first identify, categorize, and replicate 100 anomalies in the cross-section of expected equity returns. We then comprehensively study their dynamic interaction with popular proxies for time-varying market-level arbitrage conditions. Our findings reveal a surprisingly weak role of commonly employed measures of market-wide arbitrage risks and constraints. Even though this “big picture” evidence is by no means conclusive, our findings might potentially be best interpreted as supporting the growing literature which uncovers some shortcomings of the limits to arbitrage argument.
A comparison of auditor and non-auditor performance evaluations: Are accountants harsh critics?

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether audit professionals exhibit greater performance evaluation bias compared to non-accounting professionals. Design/methodology/approach - Both audit and non-accounting professional subjects read a case study and evaluated the performance of a hypothetical subordinate. Two factors were manipulated the subordinate's work performance history and the subordinate's current performance relative to a budget. Findings - It was found that reputation bias and hindsight bias are prevalent in both professional groups. The groups exhibit no difference with respect to reputation bias; however, it was found that public accountants exhibit significantly greater hindsight bias relative to non-accounting professionals. Practical implications - The paper provides evidence that accountants are relatively harsh critics of subordinate performance. Importantly, the paper investigates accountant vs non-accountant comparisons where subordinates' Originality/value - This paper is the first to make direct comparisons of performance evaluation bias effects between auditors and similarly experienced working professions.
Gravitational Lensing Model Degeneracies: Is Steepness All-Important?

In gravitational lensing, steeper mass profiles generically produce longer time delays but smaller magnifications, without necessarily changing the image positions or magnification ratios between different images. This is well known. We find in this paper, however, that even if steepness is fixed, time delays can still have significant model dependence, which we attribute to shape-modeling degeneracies. This conclusion follows from numerical experiments with models of 35 galaxy lenses. We suggest that varying and twisting ellipticities, features that are explored by pixelated lens models but not, so far, by parametric models, has an important effect on time delays.
The egalitarian case against Brundtland's sustainability

At the heart of any concept of sustainable development lies an idea of intergenerational justice. The latter can be understood in various ways, depending on the general theory of justice one considers most defensible. The author spells out six possible philosophical views on the matter. He shows the extent to which differences in logic also translate as significant differences in the intergenerational principles to be followed, using notions of savings and dissavings. Special attention is being paid to two reasons why the directives of a luck egalitarian theory of intergenerational justice do not necessarily coincide with Brundtland's view on intergenerational justice. Such differences become clear once we understand that, as a matter of principle, luck egalitarians should oppose not only generational dissavings, but also generational savings, hence stick to a strict "neither less, nor more" rule.
Immunological Profiling of Obesity

It is widely accepted that chronic inflammation contributes to the pathogenesis of obesity. Researchers have recently discovered that increased inflammatory cytokines and the infiltration and activation of macrophage cells in the adipose tissue are related to chronic obesity. This immunologic dysregulation has led to the development of the classical pro-inflammatory paradigm. However, since chronic inflammation associated with obesity is more than just the overproduction of pro-inflammatory cytokines, precise dissection requires beyond the classical pro-inflammatory cytokines. The purpose of this review is to summarize the immunological profiling of obesity for theragnostic convenience, focusing on the cytokine and adipokine network in obesity and the significance of the balance of Th1/Th2 immunity.
Physical Demands of Different Positions in FA Premier League Soccer.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the physical demands of English Football Association (FA) Premier League soccer of three different positional classifications (defender, midfielder and striker). Computerised time-motion video-analysis using the Bloomfield Movement Classification was undertaken on the purposeful movement (PM) performed by 55 players. Recognition of PM had a good inter-tester reliability strength of agreement (κ= 0.7277). Players spent 40.6 ± 10.0% of the match performing PM. Position had a significant influence on %PM time spent sprinting, running, shuffling, skipping and standing still (p < 0.05). However, position had no significant influence on the %PM time spent performing movement at low, medium, high or very high intensities (p > 0.05). Players spent 48.7 ± 9.2% of PM time moving in a directly forward direction, 20.6 ± 6.8% not moving in any direction and the remainder of PM time moving backward, lateral, diagonal and arced directions. The players performed the equivalent of 726 ± 203 turns during the match; 609 ± 193 of these being of 0° to 90° to the left or right. Players were involved in the equivalent of 111 ± 77 on the ball movement activities per match with no significant differences between the positions for total involvement in on the ball activity (p > 0.05). This study has provided an indication of the different physical demands of different playing positions in FA Premier League match-play through assessment of movements performed by players. Key pointsPlayers spent ~40% of the match performing Pur-poseful Movement (PM). Position had a significant influence on %PM time spent performing each motion class except walking and jogging. Players performed >700 turns in PM, most of these being of 0°-90°. Strikers performed most high to very high intensity activity and most contact situations.Defenders also spent a significantly greater %PM time moving backwards than the other two posi-tions.Different positions could benefit from more specific conditioning programs.
FGF8 Activates Proliferation and Migration in Mouse Post-Natal Oligodendrocyte Progenitor Cells

Fibroblast growth factor 8 (FGF8) is a key molecular signal that is necessary for early embryonic development of the central nervous system, quickly disappearing past this point. It is known to be one of the primary morphogenetic signals required for cell fate and survival processes in structures such as the cerebellum, telencephalic and isthmic organizers, while its absence causes severe abnormalities in the nervous system and the embryo usually dies in early stages of development. In this work, we have observed a new possible therapeutic role for this factor in demyelinating disorders, such as leukodystrophy or multiple sclerosis. In vitro, oligodendrocyte progenitor cells were cultured with differentiating medium and in the presence of FGF8. Differentiation and proliferation studies were performed by immunocytochemistry and PCR. Also, migration studies were performed in matrigel cultures, where oligodendrocyte progenitor cells were placed at a certain distance of a FGF8-soaked heparin bead. The results showed that both migration and proliferation was induced by FGF8. Furthermore, a similar effect was observed in an in vivo demyelinating mouse model, where oligodendrocyte progenitor cells were observed migrating towards the FGF8-soaked heparin beads where they were grafted. In conclusion, the results shown here demonstrate that FGF8 is a novel factor to induce oligodendrocyte progenitor cell activation, migration and proliferation in vitro, which can be extrapolated in vivo in demyelinated animal models.
Cell Attachment and Proliferation of Human Adipose-Derived Stem Cells on PLGA/Chitosan Electrospun Nano-Biocomposite

Objective In this study, nano-biocomposite composed of poly (lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) and chitosan (CS) were electrospun through a single nozzle by dispersing the CS nano-powders in PLGA solution. The cellular behavior of human adipose derived stem cells (h-ADSCs) on random and aligned scaffolds was then evaluated. Materials and Methods In this experimental study, the PLGA/CS scaffolds were prepared at the different ratios of 90/10, 80/20, and 70/30 (w/w) %. Morphology, cell adhesion and prolif- eration rate of h-ADSCs on the scaffolds were assessed using scanning electron microscope (SEM), 3-(4, 5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2, 5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay and trypan blue staining respectively. Results H-ADSCs seeded on the matrices indicated that the PLGA/CS composite matrix with aligned nanofibres and higher content of CS nano-powders gave significantly better performance than others in terms of cell adhesion and proliferation rate (P<0.05). Conclusion We found that CS enhanced cell adhesion and proliferation rate, and aligned nanofibers guided cell growth along the longitudinal axis of the nanofibers, which would provide a beneficial approach for tissue engineering.
Human Rights and Social Justice in a Global Perspective: An Introduction to International Social Work

Chapter 1: International Social Development Chapter 2: Human Rights Chapter 3: Human Trafficking Chapter 4: International Child Welfare Chapter 5: War and Conflict Chapter 6: AIDS Chapter 7: Issues Particularly Affecting Women Chapter 8: Social Work and the Physical Environment Chapter 9: Millennium Development Goals and Beyond Chapter 10: A Call to Action Appendix A: Universal Declaration of Human Rights Appendix B: Opportunities in International Social Work
Equivariant weight filtration for real algebraic varieties with action

We show the existence of an equivariant weight filtration on the equivariant homology of real algebraic varieties equipped with a finite group action, by applying group homology onto the weight complex of McCrory and Parusi\'nski. The group action enriches the information contained in the induced equivariant weight spectral sequence from which we can not extract finite additivity directly if the group is of even order. Still, we manage to construct additive invariants from its elementary bricks, and prove that they are induced from the very equivariant geometry of real algebraic varieties with action, and that they coincide with Fichou's equivariant virtual Betti numbers in some cases. In the case of the two-elements group, we recover these through the use of globally invariant chains and the equivariant version of Guillen and Navarro Aznar's extension criterion.
Enhancing Recovery Rates: Lessons from Year One of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies Programme

Background: The English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative aims to make evidence-based psychological therapies for depression and anxiety disorder more widely available in the National Health Service (NHS). 32 IAPT services based on a stepped care model were established in the first year of the programme. We report on the reliable recovery rates achieved by patients treated in the services and identify predictors of recovery at patient level, service level, and as a function of compliance with National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Treatment Guidelines. Method: Data from 19,395 patients who were clinical cases at intake, attended at least two sessions, had at least two outcomes scores and had completed their treatment during the period were analysed. Outcome was assessed with the patient health questionnaire depression scale (PHQ-9) and the anxiety scale (GAD-7). Results: Data completeness was high for a routine cohort study. Over 91% of treated patients had paired (pre-post) outcome scores. Overall, 40.3 % of patients were reliably recovered at post-treatment, 63.7% showed reliable improvement and 6.6% showed reliable deterioration. Most patients received treatments that were recommended by NICE. When a treatment not recommended by NICE was provided, recovery rates were reduced. Service characteristics that predicted higher reliable recovery rates were: high average number of therapy sessions; higher step-up rates among individuals who started with low intensity treatment; larger services; and a larger proportion of experienced staff. Conclusions: Compliance with the IAPT clinical model is associated with enhanced rates of reliable recovery.