Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
High rates of transmission of subtype E human immunodeficiency virus type 1 among heterosexual couples in Northern Thailand: role of sexually transmitted diseases and immune compromise.

The heterosexual transmission of subtype E human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection was evaluated in 467 couples in Thailand in whom the man was HIV-1 positive and the woman had no risk factors for HIV other than sex with her infected partner. At baseline, 216 (46.3%) of the 467 women were positive for HIV-1; prevalence of HIV among women was 52.2% when their male partners had CD4+ lymphocyte counts of <200 cells/microL, 45.9% in women whose partners had counts of 200-499 micro/L, and 39.2% in women whose partners had counts of >/=500/microL. Women were twice as likely to be HIV positive if their partners had a history of a sexually transmitted disease (STD); however, their HIV prevalence was 29% among couples who had no STD history. It appears that female partners of men infected with subtype E HIV-1 are at high risk of infection even when the man's CD4+ cell count is relatively high. A high rate of STDs may contribute significantly to this risk [corrected].
Old and Young Politicians

We evaluate the effect of a politician’s age on political governance, reelection rates,and policies using data on Italian local governments. Our results suggest that younger politicians are more likely to behave strategically in response to election incentives: they increase spending and obtain more transfers from higher levels of government in preelection years. We argue that is a sign of stronger career concerns incentives. The results are robust to adopting three different identification strategies: fixed-effects regression, standard regression discontinuity design, and an augmented regression discontinuity design that controls for residual heterogeneity.
A review on the impact of cognitive dysfunction on social, occupational, and general functional outcomes in bipolar disorder

Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with significant impairment in cognitive performance across multiple domains of function that often persist after clinical recovery. It remains unclear, however, as to whether this process is related to the clinical status of BD being depressed, manic/hypomanic, or euthymic. In this review, we examine the literature on the cross‐sectional and longitudinal relationships between cognitive function and general function depending on the clinical phase of BD.
Lords of labour: Working and shirking in Bhilai

At the ethnographic level this paper discusses work and work-groups in the company town of Bhilai (Madhya Pradesh). Though its central focus is on those who have permanent jobs with the Bhilai Steel Plant, a large-scale public sector enterprise, brief comparison is made with current attitudes to peasant agriculture, with contract labour in the plant and with workers in the private sector. At an analytical level, it offers a critique of E.P. Thompson's thesis that modern machine production requires and promotes a new concept of time and a new kind of work discipline, arguing that this thesis not only romanticises task-oriented peasant agriculture but also effaces the extremely variable nature of industrial production. It further suggests that—at least here—public sector employment serves in significant measure as a 'melting-pot' which creates important solidarities between work-mates that transcend the barriers of caste, religion and regional ethnicity, whereas recruitment procedures and the composition of work-groups in the private sector have tended to reproduce such 'primordial' loyalties. The tentative hypothesis is that the dominance of the public sector is not unrelated to Bhilai's history of relative communal harmony, which is potentially threatened by current economic and policy trends.
An Instructional Feedback Technique for Teaching Project Management Tools Aligned With PMBOK

Contribution: An approach is presented to provide contextualized feedback for students using a project management (PM) tool. This approach covers the ten PM knowledge areas, guiding students through the planning of software projects. Background: Because software PM is unfeasible without the support of a PM tool there is a growing demand that these tools be taught in the higher education computer courses. Hence, several approaches already have been proposed to improve this teaching, such as educational PM tools or simulators, which facilitate the application of specific PM techniques and the treatment of their results. Another approach to improve the teaching of PM tools is instructional feedback, but little information is as yet available on how to provide instructional feedback when teaching software PM. Intended Outcomes: Instructional feedback, essential to helping students to learn, is based on an evaluation of their actions and decisions. To take advantage of this instructional approach, this paper proposes an instructional feedback technique to be employed in an instructional unit (IU) teaching PM tools aligned with the project management body of knowledge. Application Design: This technique was evaluated through an experiment carried out in undergraduate computer courses. Control and experiential groups were exposed to the same IU, with only the experiential group using the instructional feedback technique. Findings: The proposed feedback technique contributes to student learning, meeting students’ need for better explanations to acquire a comprehensive understanding of PM theory and its practice.
Temptation‐Driven Behavior and Taxation: A Quantitative Analysis in a Life‐Cycle Model

This paper examines the impact of labor and capital income taxes in a stochastic overlapping generations (OLG) economy where agents face borrowing constraints and their behavior is temptation driven. We quantitatively establish that the existence of temptation in preferences may function as an opposing mechanism to modeling choices, such as liquidity constraints, life-cycle structure, and idiosyncratic earnings risks, that are critical in delivering a positive capital income tax rate. We show that a sufficiently large measure of individuals having self-control preferences, or alternatively, a sufficiently high cost of exercising self-control, puts downward pressure on the optimal capital income tax rate.
Access to and Utilization of Flexible Work Options

Many workers do not utilize the flexible work options to which they have access nor do they necessarily have access to all options officially provided by their organizations. This study sheds light on these gaps using probit models with sample selection to predict access to and utilization of fourteen flexible options. The findings highlight the roles of supervisor support, occupation, and work‐life culture. The influence of each of these factors on access and utilization differs.
Poverty across the Life Cycle: Evidence from the PSID

The likelihood of experiencing poverty at some point during the adult life cycle is estimated. These probabilities are derived through a set of life tables built upon 25 waves of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, and represent an alternative approach to studying poverty than prior empirical studies. Life table analyses are divided into early adulthood (ages 20-40), middle adulthood (ages 40-60),and later adulthood (ages 60-80). The findings indicate that individuals within the sample face a significant risk of poverty at some point during their adult lives, particularly during the early and later stages of adulthood. Duration tends to be relatively short (1 or 2 years), but once poverty occurs, it is likely to occur again. Results also reveal the profound life-course effect that race, education, and gender have upon the likelihood of encountering poverty during the adult years. Several policy and research implications are discussed. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.
Riding High: Quality and Customer Satisfaction in Equestrian Tourism in Iceland

Abstract The aim of this research was to investigate customer satisfaction and visitor attitudes to several aspects of service quality in equestrian (horse riding) tourism. A survey yielding 2774 responses from visitors in horse rental and horse trekking was conducted. Despite the development of methods for evaluating service quality, methods for measuring it within equestrian businesses are in their initial stage. Using the SERVQUAL model or developing a derivative model for measuring service quality in equestrian businesses might be useful. This research contributes to this discussion by identifying important factors correlating to customer satisfaction in equestrian tourism businesses and by estimating the importance of those factors. The visitor satisfaction reported is high and respondents are near unanimous in their willingness to recommend the business they bought the service from. Visitors in horse rental relate satisfaction with the service to the length and diversity of the trail, the performance and service mindedness of staff and for overseas visitors the facilities for the horses were of importance. In several aspects, a significant difference is found between visitors on horse trekking and in horse rental. Furthermore, a difference can be discerned between domestic and overseas visitor attitudes, indicating the variety of target groups in equestrian tourism. The majority of respondents are female and the percentage of young people is higher among domestic visitors. Word of mouth is an important factor as the proportion of visitors who heard about the products and services from friends and relatives is high.
Exploring SWOT analysis – where are we now?

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine the use of the strategic management tool, Strengths‐Weaknesses‐Opportunities‐Threats or SWOT analysis, and to assess how the methodology has been used as well as changes to the methodology. The findings both for and against SWOT analysis should lead to a balanced view of the technique as well as yield ideas for needed theory building.Design/methodology/approach – Using the ABInform Global® database, academic peer‐reviewed articles were compiled indicating SWOT as one of the article's key index and search words.Findings – The use of SWOT analysis continues to permeate the academic peer‐reviewed literature. Research supports SWOT analysis as a tool for planning purposes. Over the past decade, SWOT research has focused on analyzing organizations for recommended strategic actions. As a methodology for strategic positioning, SWOT analysis has been extended beyond companies to countries and industries and is used in virtually every published business case positi.
The Borda Count and its real-world alternatives: Comparing scoring rules in Nauru and Slovenia

This article examines strategic elements of voter behaviour in parliamentary elections where the voting method is a scoring rule other than plurality: the Borda Count, which is used for the election of ethnic minorities in Slovenia, and the Dowdall rule, which is used in the Pacific island state of Nauru in multi-seat districts. After first examining the general properties of scoring rules, and generating theoretical differences between the two rules, we look at empirical evidence from Nauru and Slovenia. This casts a doubt on predictions based simply on a voting rule's mathematical properties and on the accuracy of assumptions of sincere rank ordering. 本文研究了议会选举投票者行为的策略因素。 议会选举中的投票方法是一个有别于多数法的计分法则：斯洛文尼亚少数族群选举使用的波达计数法；太平洋岛屿国家瑙鲁多席位选区使用的斗多尔法则。 作者首先分析了计分法则的一般属性，并对两种法则做了理论区分。 然后研究了瑙鲁和斯洛文尼亚的实证资料。 作者对仅仅基于投票规则数学属性的预测以及有关纯粹排行假设的精确性表示了质疑。
Consumers and macro-level forces behind CO2 emission development.

With the ImPACT framework, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions can be simply presented as combination of four forces: population, affluence, energy intensity of economy and emission intensity of energy. Consumers can directly influence energy efficiency and emission intensity by their daily purchases and investments. Conserving energy has a direct influence. Economic incentives are cost-effective. Environmentally sound technology and infrastructure has to be built to reduce external constraints. Exchanging incomes for leisure and family planning are radical means but have strong impact on emissions. Consumers can be empowered to change lifestyles with consumer policy that increases awareness and knowledge, informs individuals as to how they can make a difference, eases participation and motivates. The structures behind consumption are often strong. The developments would have to be far-sighted and take place in many fields in order to avoid leakages and strengthen the lever of the consumers.
Matching Concepts With Measurement: Who Belongs to Africa's Middle Class?

This paper advocates for a conceptualization of the African middle class that would be universally valid: security from economic vulnerability and prospects for social mobility. We suggest three minimum criteria that are jointly necessary and sufficient to reflect this conceptualization: secondary schooling completion, decent housing amenities and skilled employment. Using household surveys for nine African countries, we then demonstrate how measures of the middle class based on expenditure thresholds refer to households with vastly different abilities to meet these three criteria. This cautions against overreliance on expenditure-based definitions, which may obscure qualitative differences among the middle class across African countries. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Foreign Exchange Intervention: Strategies and Effectiveness

Foreign exchange intervention has been actively used as a policy tool in many economies in Asia and elsewhere. In this paper, we examine two intervention rules (leaning against exchange rate misalignment and leaning against the wind), utilised with varying degrees of transparency, based on a simple model with three kinds of agents: fundamentalists, speculators and the central bank. We assess the effectiveness of these rules against five criteria: stabilising the exchange rate, reducing current account imbalances, discouraging speculation, minimising reserves volatility and limiting intervention costs. Overall we find no dominant intervention strategy. Intervention that reduces exchange rate volatility, for example, also reduces the risks of speculation, creating a feedback loop and potentially leading to high levels of speculation, reserves volatility and intervention costs. These intervention costs will be especially large when exchange rate movements are driven by interest rate shocks, although some degree of opaqueness can help to reduce them. Survey evidence from BIS (2005, 2013) indicates that central banks follow a range of different strategies when intervening in foreign exchange rates. Given the trade-offs that different strategies entail in our model, this is not surprising.
Validation of Biochemical Markers for the Prediction of Liver Fibrosis and Necroinflammatory Activity in Hemodialysis Patients with Chronic Hepatitis C

Background: Liver biopsy is an imperfect gold standard for assessing the disease severity in hemodialysis patients with chronic hepatitis C. Our purpose was to compare the accuracy of the FibroTest (FT) and ActiTest (AT) with liver biopsy and the AST-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) in determining hepatic fibrosis and necroinflammatory activity in hemodialysis patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Methods: The FT-AT index combining 6 biochemical markers was assessed in 33 hemodialysis patients with HCV. Liver fibrosis and necroinflammatory activity was staged and graded according to the METAVIR scoring system. Results: The accuracy of FT-AT versus biopsy was 0.46 for significant fibrosis and 0.36 for severe necroinflammatory activity. The FT index had a positive predictive value of 20% for scores greater than 0.6 and a negative predictive value of 45% for scores less than 0.2. Eleven of the 33 patients had scores ≤0.2, 6 had significant fibrosis on biopsy. Four out of 5 patients with FT scores >0.6 had mild fibrosis. APRI correlated well with the biopsy. Conclusion: The FT-AT test does not seem to be a reliable noninvasive marker for the prediction of necroinflammatory activity and fibrosis in hemodialysis patients with HCV and cannot be used as an alternative to either liver biopsy or APRI.
Polyamines in colorectal cancer. Evaluation of polyamine concentrations in the colon tissue, serum, and urine of 50 patients with colorectal cancer

Total, free, and acetylated polyamine concentrations were measured simultaneously in colon tissue, serum, and urine of 50 patients with histologically proven colorectal cancer, 40 patients with nonmalignant gastrointestinal diseases, and 30 healthy volunteers. Compared with histologically unaffected colon tissue, concentrations were significantly (P < 0.001) higher for putrescine, elevated for cadaverine, and nearly identical for spermidine and spermine in colon carcinoma, whereas N1‐acetylated and N8‐acetylated spermidine were detectable in cancer tissue only. Serum and urine concentrations of all polyamines except total cadaverine and spermine in serum and free spermine in urine were significantly elevated compared with healthy controls and highest sensitivity for colon cancer was found for total spermidine (89.15%) in serum and acetylputrescine (84.5%), total putrescine (84.0%), N1‐acetylspermidine (79.3%), and total spermidine (92.1%) in urine. However, nonmalignant gastrointestinal diseases partly showed similar elevations which resulted in a low specificity for polyamines in colorectal cancer. Therefore, polyamines are of little value only as diagnostic markers in colorectal carcinoma. Since polyamine concentrations in serum and urine normalized in patients after curative operation while they were further elevated in patients with proven tumor relapse or metastases, these substances might play a clinical role in predicting therapeutic success or indicating relapse of the tumor. Although a significant dependency of polyamine concentrations in serum or urine to Dukes' classification, tumor localization, CEA, CA 19‐9, or CA 125 did not exist, a significant linear correlation was found for tumor size.
UK stock price effects of permanent and transitory shocks

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between stock prices and dividends using a structural cointegrated vector autoregression. The approach adopted fully identifies the system without imposing arbitrary restrictions and decomposes innovations into permanent and transitory components. Prior research indicates that transitory price shocks could lead to stock price predictability. Our key new empirical finding is that permanent dividend shocks could also lead to aggregate stock price predictability in the UK.
Effective bandwidth-based admission control for multiservice CDMA cellular networks

We develop product form traffic models for single- and multiple-cell code-division multiple-access (CDMA) networks with multiple classes of mobile subscribers. The key feature of this development is the specification of a flexible call admission control procedure that details the numbers of mobiles of each class in each cell that the system operator should allow in order to maintain an acceptable quality of service. Effective bandwidth techniques from the analysis of statistical multiplexing at an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) based broadband integrated services digital network (ISDN) link are used to give performance guarantees that overcome the variability in interference levels characteristic of CDMA cellular networks. The result is an admissible region bounded by a finite number of hyperplanes and a simple and efficient call admission policy. The CDMA mobile network, operating within the admissible region described, has a very similar form to a circuit-switched network operating with fixed routing. This similarity allows the existing traffic modeling techniques and network management strategies for general loss networks to be applied to CDMA mobile cellular networks. In particular, with standard assumptions on the call arrival processes and holding times, the stationary state distribution has a product form on the truncated state space defined by the call admission strategy.
Is Health a Necessity in Sub‐Saharan Africa? An Investigation of Income‐Elasticity of Health Expenditures In Rural Senegal

Investigating income‐elasticity of health expenditures can provide insights into the extent of public involvement in the health sector and the need for co‐financing schemes. Although this is particularly relevant in vulnerable countries, evidence from sub‐Saharan Africa is lacking. The paper explores the relationship between permanent and current income and health expenditures. First, at the patient level, income‐elasticity of health expenditures during the last medical contact with a qualified health provider is investigated. Second, household‐level estimation of income‐elasticity of household health expenditures is conducted to account for the healthcare use rate. The results suggest that health is a necessity good, which has methodological and policy implications. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Affine Models of the Joint Dynamics of Exchange Rates and Interest Rates

Abstract This paper extends the affine class of term structure models to describe the joint dynamics of exchange rates and interest rates. In particular, the issue of how to reconcile the low volatility of interest rates with the high volatility of exchange rates is addressed. The incomplete market approach of introducing exchange rate volatility that is orthogonal to both interest rates and the pricing kernels is shown to be infeasible in the affine setting. Models in which excess exchange rate volatility is orthogonal to interest rates but not orthogonal to the pricing kernels are proposed and validated via Kalman filter estimation of maximal 5-factor models for 6 country pairs.
Host-country effects in coordinated, liberal and hybrid market economies: US subsidiaries in Switzerland, Germany and the UK

The paper addresses two as yet unexplored issues regarding the uptake of host-country employment relations practices, contributing to a better understanding of findings for hybrid host-market economies such as Switzerland. Host-country effects are differentiated by practices that belong to either industrial relations or education and training, as per the varieties of capitalism approach. There follows an investigation of the extent to which foreign subsidiaries' overall uptake of host-country employment relations practices is determined by the subsidiary incorporation type and size for practices related to industrial relations and education and training. Analyses of US subsidiaries in Switzerland, and, in contrast, those in Germany and the UK, on the whole support the propositions that distinguish between industrial relations and education and training-related host-country effects.
Borrowing Constraints and Progress through School: Evidence from Peru

This paper investigates the effect of borrowing constraints on the timing of human capital investment in a developing country by looking at how quickly children with different family backgrounds progress through the primary school system in Peru. The main findings are that children start withdrawing from school earlier, as indicated by repetition of grades, in households with lower income and durable good holdings and when children are more closely spaced. Behavior also differs as predicted between children from households that appear to be borrowing constrained and those that appear unconstrained. Copyright 1994 by MIT Press.