Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Financial system transition in Central Europe: the first decade

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (CEEC-3) have undertaken substantial efforts to build a new financial system under the constraints of their legacies from central planning. In this study, first we look at the banking sector. Then we give a description of bond and stock markets. These topics are comple-mented by an analysis of the structure of funding for the private and public sector, of the financial sector's vulnerability and of the legal conditions for external finance as well as for banking supervision. We find that the financial sector and financial intermediation are internationally integrated already to a large extent. This implies, inter alia, a non-negligible exposure of the corporate sector to exchange rate risk. While funding via equity markets remained modest, local currency-denominated debt issues are important for public financing. Our analysis shows that the legal, supervisory and regulatory infra-structure of the financial system is formally well developed, but suffers from enforcement problems.
Does a Flexible Industry Wage Structure Increase Employment?: the U.S. Experience

This paper examines the flexibility of wages across industries inthe U.S. and seeks to determine the potential impact which changes in the industrial wage structure may have for employment. With regard to the flexibility of wages across industries, we find that the U.S., alone among the major OECD countries, has experienced substantial changes in the industry wage structure since 1970, with the variation of log wages among industries increasing dramatically, particularly in the 1970s. This represents a widening of the gap between wages in the high and low wage sectors. In order to evaluate these changes, we estimate equations linking changes in industry wages over an extended period of time to a variety of potential wage determining characteristics. We find that industrial wages are positively correlated with value productivity per worker, even after controlling for institutional and supply side factors which may have contributed to the increased dispersion of wages in the 1970s. Our results are not consistent with the standard competitive model of industry labor markets, in which wages and productivity are uncorrelated across sectors and wages depend on aggregate, rather than sectoral conditions.With regard to the impact of a flexible industry wage structure on employment, we evaluate the circumstances under which flexible wages among industries may be employment enhancing, and the set of circumstances under which flexible wages are likely to be employment reducing. For the U.S.economy in the 1970s we find that the data support the latter set of circumstances. The bottom line of the U.S. experience is that flexible wages by industry have not contributed to employment growth.
Dopamine agonists restore cortical plasticity in patients with idiopathic restless legs syndrome

In the present work, we aimed at assessing whether patients with idiopathic restless legs syndrome (RLS) showed alterations of sensory‐motor plasticity, an indirect probe for motor learning, within the motor cortex (M1). Previous findings suggest that learning in human M1 occurs through LTP‐like mechanisms. To test our hypothesis, we employed the paired associative stimulation (PAS) protocol by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which is able to induce LTP‐like effects in the motor cortex of normal subjects. Twelve patients with idiopathic RLS and 10 age‐ and sex‐matched control subjects were recruited. PAS protocol consisted of 0.05 Hz electrical median nerve stimulation (90 stimuli), paired with 0.05 Hz TMS (90 stimuli) over the hot spot for stimulating the abductor pollicis brevis (APB) muscle given 25 milliseconds after the onset of the electrical stimulus. Corticospinal excitability recorded in APB muscle, as indexed by MEP obtained after single stimulus, was tested before and up to 30 minutes after PAS protocol. Eight of 12 patients were studied before and after 4 weeks of dopaminergic treatment. PAS protocol increased significantly corticospinal excitability as long as 30 minutes in healthy subjects. On the contrary, PAS protocol did not change the amplitude of MEPs in patients with idiopathic RLS without treatment. PAS associative plasticity was restored after 4 weeks of dopaminergic treatment. Our data demonstrated that associative sensory‐motor plasticity, an indirect probe for motor learning, is impaired in idiopathic RLS patients but may be reverted to normal after dopaminergic treatment. © 2008 Movement Disorder Society
Moral Attitudes Predict Cheating and Gamesmanship Behaviors Among Competitive Tennis Players

Background: The present study tested Lee et al.’s (2008) model of moral attitudes and cheating behavior in sports in an Italian sample of young tennis players and extended it to predict behavior in actual match play. In the first phase of the study we proposed that moral, competence and status values would predict prosocial and antisocial moral attitudes directly, and indirectly through athletes’ goal orientations. In the second phase, we hypothesized that moral attitudes would directly predict actual cheating behavior observed during match play. Method: Adolescent competitive tennis players (N = 314, 76.75% males, M age = 14.36 years, SD = 1.50) completed measures of values, goal orientations, and moral attitudes. A sub-sample (n = 90) was observed in 45 competitive tennis matches by trained observers who recorded their cheating and gamesmanship behaviors on a validated checklist. Results: Consistent with hypotheses, athletes’ values predicted their moral attitudes through the effects of goal orientations. Anti-social attitudes directly predicted cheating behavior in actual match play providing support for a direct link between moral attitude and actual behavior. Conclusion: The present study findings support key propositions of Lee and colleagues’ model, and extended its application to competitive athletes in actual match play.
Impact attenuation and variability during running in females: a lifespan investigation.

CONTEXT Impact is known to cause injury during running, while variability is thought to promote healthy performance. OBJECTIVE Quantify contributions of the lower extremity and back and the variability of impact generation among (1) prepubescent girls (Grp 1), (2) normally menstruating women (Grp 2), and (3) postmenopausal women (Grp 3) to address possible lifespan changes during running. DESIGN A mixed model experiment. SETTING Biomechanics Laboratory. PARTICIPANTS 31 healthy females owing membership to Grp1, Grp 2, or Grp 3. INTERVENTION Participants ran on a treadmill at their preferred speed (45 s) and at a speed 10% faster (45 s) while instrumented with uniaxial accelerometers. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Lower extremity attenuation, back attenuation and variability of peak impact acceleration values. RESULTS Lower extremity attenuation and variability were greatest for Grp 1 while impact variability was least for Grp 2. CONCLUSION Lifespan phases appear to affect impact attenuation strategies and variability of impact during running for females.
Unemployment Rate Dispersion in Melbourne: The ‘Regional’ Dimension

In this paper we examine unemployment rate dispersion across the (statistical) regions in the Melbourne metropolitan area. We find that the level of dispersion is positively correlated with the unemployment rate in all the regions taken together and that the ‘elasticity’ of dispersion with respect to the unemployment rate is unity, with the result that there is a tendency for the level of dispersion relative to the average unemployment rate to remain stationary over our sample period. We discuss the implications of this and show that the unemployment rate differences are persistent in the sense that the same areas exhibit relatively high (or low) unemployment rates over the whole of our sample period. We also estimate equilibrium rates of unemployment for the different regions in Melbourne and conjecture possible explanations for the differences in the level and in the persistence of the equilibrium rates.
Transient stress evolution in repulsion and attraction dominated glasses

We present results from microscopic mode coupling theory generalized to colloidal dispersions under shear in an integration-through-transients formalism. Stress-strain curves in start-up shear, flow curves, and normal stresses are calculated with the equilibrium static structure factor as only input. Hard spheres close to their glass transition are considered, as are hard spheres with a short-ranged square-well attraction at their attraction dominated glass transition. The consequences of steric packing and physical bond formation on the linear elastic response, the stress release during yielding, and the steady plastic flow are discussed and compared to experimental data from concentrated model dispersions.
Parents' Expressed Educational Dissent in Middle School Education Systems

OF DISSERATION PARENTS’ EXPRESSED EDUCATIONAL DISSENT IN MIDDLE SCHOOL EDUCATION SYSTEMS Hoy and Miskel (2008) and Weick (1976) conceptualize schools as organizational systems of which parents comprise part of the organization. Specifically, parent involvement includes such behaviors as assisting students with homework, participating in policy decisions, and providing feedback (Barge & Loges, 2003). Parent involvement is largely championed in K12 education and particularly in middle schools (e.g., Coalition of Essential Schools, 1993; Texas Education Agency, 1991). In fact, both parents and teachers value building positive parent-teacher relationships (Kalin & Steh, 2010) and may communicate regarding a variety of topics including student academic performance, classroom behavior, preparation, hostile peer interactions, and health (Thompson & Mazer, 2012). However, while parents and teachers report valuing positive parent-teacher interactions, Lasky (2000) found that “teachers and parents sometimes felt confused, powerless, and misunderstood as a result of their interactions” (p. 857). One specific type of parent-teacher communication that may lead to dissatisfying interactions is parent expressed educational dissent (PED). Similar to organizations and workplaces that do not value dissent as a feedback process increasing democratic discourse in the system, schools may actively attempt to avoid potentially negative or conflict-inducing communication such as dissent (Ehman, 1995). Scholars (e.g., Davies, 1987; Fine, 1993; Sarason, 1995) note the importance of dissent and parent involvement in education systems, and case studies espouse positive changes within education systems as a result of parental dissent (e.g., Ehman, 1997). In order to better understand PED, this dissertation project seeks to (a) examine why parents express dissent in educational systems, (b) identify how parents express dissent in educational systems, and (c) measure how PED affects members of the educational system. To accomplish these goals, the author conducted a series of focus groups with teachers and parents, developed a measure of PED, and disseminated a survey to both parents and teachers assessing the antecedents and possible outcomes affected by PED. The findings of this research aim to improve organizational communication within middle school education systems such that schools may develop prosocial strategies for (re)framing and addressing PED.
Relationship between age and the risk of surgical site infection: a contemporary reexamination of a classic risk factor.

Due in large part to many landmark innovations in the care of the surgical patient, such as the use of anesthesia [1] and the development of the principles of antibiotic prophylaxis [2, 3], the number of surgical procedures performed annually has climbed steadily, with >24 million surgical procedures performed in 2001 in the United States alone [4]. Unfortunately, as surgical volume has increased and with the development of novel surgical procedures, the number of persons at risk of morbidity from surgical site infections (SSIs) has also increased. According to the most-recent estimates, 500,000 SSIs occur annually in the United States, leading to an estimated 3.7 million excess hospital days and >$1.6 billion in excess costs [5, 6]. A patient who develops an SSI while hospitalized has an -60% greater risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit, is >5 times more likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days after discharge, and incurs an attributable extra hospital stay of 6.5 days, leading to a direct cost of an additional $3000/infection [7]. Attempts to reduce such morbidity have appropriately focused on the identification of specific risk factors for SSI. Such factors may be specific to single surgical types, such as the use of internal mammary arteries for coronary arterial bypass grafting [8, 9], but many are applicable to most surgical procedures. In general, these risk factors can be categorized into 2 groups: characteristics of the surgical patient and characteristics of the procedure itself (figure 1) [10, 11]. Some risk factors-in particular, patient characteristics such as altered immune
Variations in normal color vision. V. Simulations of adaptation to natural color environments

Abstract Modern accounts of color appearance differ in whether they assume that the perceptual primaries (e.g., white and the unique hues of red, green, blue, and yellow) correspond to unique states determined by the spectral sensitivities of the observer or by the spectral statistics of the environment. We examined the interaction between observers and their environments by asking how color perception should vary if appearance depends on fixed responses in a set of color channels, when the sensitivities of these channels are adapted in plausible ways to different environments. Adaptation was modeled as gain changes in the cones and in multiple postreceptoral channels tuned to different directions in color–luminance space. Gains were adjusted so that the average channel responses were equated across two environments or for the same environment during different seasons, based on sets of natural outdoor scenes (Webster et al., 2007). Because of adaptation, even observers with a shared underlying physiology should perceive color in significantly and systematically different ways when they are exposed to and thus adapted by different contexts. These include differences in achromatic settings (owing to variations in the average chromaticity of locations) and differences in perceived hue (because of differences in scene contrasts). Modeling these changes provides a way of simulating how colors might be experienced by individuals in different color environments and provides a measure of how much color appearance might be modulated for a given observer by variations in the environment.
Hierarchal order in the formation of chloroplast division machinery in the red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae

ABSTRACT Chloroplasts have evolved from a cyanobacterial endosymbiont and multiply by dividing. Chloroplast division is performed by constriction of the ring-like protein complex (the PD machinery), which forms at the division site. The PD machinery is composed of cyanobacteria-descended components such as FtsZ and eukaryote-derived proteins such as the dynamin-related protein, DRP5B. In the red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae, FtsZ ring formation on the stromal side precedes PDR1 and DRP5B ring formation on the cytosolic side. In this study, we impaired FtsZ ring formation in C. merolae by overexpressing FtsZ just before FtsZ ring formation. As a result, PDR1 and DRP5B failed to localize at the chloroplast division site, suggesting that FtsZ ring formation is required for the PDR1 and DRP5B rings. We further found, by expressing a dominant negative form of DRP5B, that DRP5B ring formation begins on the nuclear side of the chloroplast division site. These findings provide insight into how the PD machinery forms in red algae.
Non-integrability of the generalized spring-pendulum problem

We investigate a generalization of the three-dimensional spring-pendulum system. The problem depends on two real parameters (k, a), where k is the Young modulus of the spring and a describes the nonlinearity of elastic forces. We show that this system is not integrable when k ≠ −a. We carefully investigated the case k = −a when the necessary condition for integrability given by the Morales-Ruiz–Ramis theory is satisfied. We discuss an application of the higher order variational equations for proving the non-integrability in this case.
Analysis of endocardial micro-accelerometry during Valsalva maneuvers

The endocardial acceleration (EA) signal is a particular kind of cardiac mechanogram, acquired through a micro-accelerometer, embedded at the tip of a cardiac pacing lead, that can be chronically implanted inside a cardiac chamber. In this work, we analyze the evolution of the main EA-derived markers during severe cardio-respiratory modifications. Intracardiac electrograms (EGM), intraventricular pressure and EA data were acquired from 6 sheep during a set of Valsalva-like maneuvers. These data have been processed to segment the main EA components during each Valsalva phase, in a beat-to-beat basis. Results confirm the correlation between the energy of the EA1 component and the dP/dtmax. Significant modifications are observed in the main components of the EA signal during and just after the maneuver These modifications may be useful for the characterization of respiratory events from the analysis of intracardiac EA signals.
Using Bilingual Chinese-English Word Alignments to Resolve PP-attachment Ambiguity in English

Errors in English parse trees impact the quality of syntax-based MT systems trained using those parses. Frequent sources of error for English parsers include PP-attachment ambiguity, NP-bracketing ambiguity, and coordination ambiguity. Not all ambiguities are preserved across languages. We examine a common type of ambiguity in English that is not preserved in Chinese: given a sequence “VP NP PP”, should the PP be attached to the main verb, or to the object noun phrase? We present a discriminative method for exploiting bilingual Chinese-English word alignments to resolve this ambiguity in English. On a held-out test set of Chinese-English parallel sentences, our method achieves 86.3% accuracy on this PP-attachment disambiguation task, an improvement of 4% over the accuracy of the baseline Collins parser (82.3%).
RETENTION IN AN ACCELERATED UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE COMPLETION PROGRAM

This article presents the results of research that explored the relationship between emotional intelligence and learner autonomy in the context of nontraditional higher education and their impact on student retention. This was predicated on previous research that suggested emotional intelligence might lead to student success and that autonomous learners persevere toward academic goals with more resourcefulness, initiative, and persistence than other learners do. For this study, 129 nontraditional undergraduate students associated with a small, private, liberal arts college in the northeastern U.S. completed web-based surveys measuring emotional intelligence and learner autonomy. Results indicate a strong relationship between emotional intelligence and learner autonomy. Two of three emotional intelligence constructs and two of four learner autonomy constructs contributed to retention in a logistic regression model. The article concludes with discussion of limitations of the study, suggestions for future research, and how administrators of nontraditional programs can benefit from this study. There is a new reality on the higher education landscape. No longer are the majority of 18-23 year old students in residential full-time study. Stokes (2006) states that such “traditional” students only account for 16% of higher education enrollments, yet they often constitute the primary focus of higher education administration attention. Reality tells us that the “traditional” student is anything but traditional. Research has found that 40% of today’s students study parttime, 40% attend 2-year institutions, and 58% are age 22 or older (Stokes, 2006). Choy (2002) affirms that most research defines nontraditional students by age and parttime status. Nontraditional students often have family, work responsibilities, and other life circumstances that interfere with successful completion of educational objectives as traditional, full-time students. Even so, the number of nontraditional learners is growing on campuses across the country leading increasing numbers of colleges and universities to add adult-oriented programs. Nontraditional students seek flexible and fast-paced courses allowing them to meet their educational goals while balancing work and family responsibilities.
Deflection load characteristics of laser-welded orthodontic wires.

OBJECTIVE To compare the deflection load characteristics of homogeneous and heterogeneous joints made by laser welding using various types of orthodontic wires. MATERIALS AND METHODS Four kinds of straight orthodontic rectangular wires (0.017 inch × 0.025 inch) were used: stainless-steel (SS), cobalt-chromium-nickel (Co-Cr-Ni), beta-titanium alloy (β-Ti), and nickel-titanium (Ni-Ti). Homogeneous and heterogeneous end-to-end joints (12 mm long each) were made by Nd:YAG laser welding. Two types of welding methods were used: two-point welding and four-point welding. Nonwelded wires were also used as a control. Deflection load (N) was measured by conducting the three-point bending test. The data (n = 5) were statistically analyzed using analysis of variance/Tukey test (P < .05). RESULTS The deflection loads for control wires measured were as follows: SS: 21.7 ± 0.8 N; Co-Cr-Ni: 20.0 ± 0.3 N; β-Ti: 13.9 ± 1.3 N; and Ni-Ti: 6.6 ± 0.4 N. All of the homogeneously welded specimens showed lower deflection loads compared to corresponding control wires and exhibited higher deflection loads compared to heterogeneously welded combinations. For homogeneous combinations, Co-Cr-Ni/Co-Cr-Ni showed a significantly (P < .05) higher deflection load than those of the remaining homogeneously welded groups. In heterogeneous combinations, SS/Co-Cr-Ni and β-Ti/Ni-Ti showed higher deflection loads than those of the remaining heterogeneously welded combinations (significantly higher for SS/Co-Cr-Ni). Significance (P < .01) was shown for the interaction between the two factors (materials combination and welding method). However, no significant difference in deflection load was found between four-point and two-point welding in each homogeneous or heterogeneous combination. CONCLUSION Heterogeneously laser-welded SS/Co-Cr-Ni and β-Ti/Ni-Ti wires provide a deflection load that is comparable to that of homogeneously welded orthodontic wires.
Coupling of FEM and Exterior/Interior Acoustic Field with BEM and Numerical Simulation of Vibro-Acoustic Response of Elastic Target

The numerical research of vibro-acoustic response to fluid-structure-fluid coupling system caused by acoustic loading needs to be conducted with the help of reliable structural finite element and acoustic boundary element to complete the fluid-structure-fluid coupling calculation. In this paper, discrete Kirchoff quadrilateral (DKQ) bending element and constant strain quadrilateral (CSQ) membrane element is adopted to construct DKQ-CSQ shell element of high accuracy. Therefore, a BEM-FEM numerical solution method of high accuracy is created. With this method, the vibro-acoustic response to the acoustic loading on a shell which is not only surrounded by but also filled with fluid can be solved. Numerical calculations of spherical shell are carried out, and the accuracy of the method is verified in this paper. The influence of different fluid media on echo intensity and structural vibration mode are analyzed in detail.