Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antifascism and Anti-totalitarianism: The Italian Debate

For more than ten years now, the Italian media have been using negatively connoted terms such as 'crisis', 'loss of values', or even 'end of a paradigm' when addressing the question of 'antifascism' generally. This would seem to reflect the changing political and cultural circumstances of the postwar era, the successive passing away of some of its most prominent historical figures and lastly, from the beginning of the 1990s, the near-total collapse of the entire Italian political system.1 The discredit cast on the Republic 'born out of the Resistance' has in fact contaminated the way Italian society has ended up 'treating] its past' (in both senses of the word). 2 In short, members of certain political currents have been questioning the very foundations of the antifascist commitment in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, with the obvious intent of deflating the legitimizing and identity-boosting function antifascism had acquired in the postwar Italian governments. What Emilio Gentile once called the process of 'retroactive defascistization of fascism' that he saw working its way through Italy's general public opinion during the postwar era may also have contributed to the change in the meaning of 'antifascism' as an important political and cultural referent during that period.3 The dissemination of such a 'pseudo-culture of rehabilitation' has largely been the work of the media. In Italy, as Bruno Bongiovanni has recently argued, it is the media that have established 'the agenda of the politicohistoriographical debate'. 4 Fascism appears therein as a rather benign 'Italianstyle' form of 'authoritarianism' in no way comparable to the brutality of the German National Socialist regime.5 The very impressive revival that the notion of totalitarianism has enjoyed in the Italian media has produced a number of disturbing simplifications regarding the communist experience, reduced to having 'a supposed nature' as 'the Communist phenomenon', but also regarding antifascism itself, which has
Investment in Education and Redistributive Taxation without Precommitment

This paper compares private investment in risky education in a laissezfaire economy and with income redistribution. Obtaining higher education requires time and may require paying nondeductible resource costs. The paper shows that redistributive taxation may actually increase private investment in risky education also without precommitment. (This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Intergenerational income mobility in Gothenburg, Sweden, 1925–1958, before the rise of the welfare state

This paper investigates intergenerational mobility at the household level by using tax data for the city of Gothenburg, Sweden for two periods, 1925–1947 and 1936–1958, before the rise of the welfare state. Young households (selected persons under 18) are followed and income mobility (defined as changes in household disposable equivalent income) is followed across generations. In addition, socioeconomic mobility (defined as changes in the socioeconomic status of household head) is followed across generations. These two approaches of measuring mobility will tell us to what extent sons and daughters follow in their fathers' footsteps before the rise of the welfare state in Sweden. The results indicate significant intergenerational income mobility for both periods, while the period from 1925–1947 seems to be more mobile. In addition, socioeconomic mobility increased during the last period, 1936–1958. Hence, even before the rise of the welfare state, Sweden had high intergenerational income mobility.
Brand and performance signals in the choice of franchise opportunities

When choosing a franchise chain, potential franchisees must incorporate into their decision process the signals of franchise chain quality being sent to the market by the franchisor. Some of these signals along with potential franchisees' choices of franchise chain are analyzed. The results show that brand value and franchisee performance were the key signals used by Spanish franchisees during the period 2002 through 2008, when deciding to open a franchise outlet. The aim of this study was to contribute to strengthening the relationship between entrepreneurship and franchising in Spain from an empirical viewpoint.
REGENERATING MARKET ATTACHMENTS

Drawing together insights from key figures in the collections industry and observation at one of the UK's largest debt purchasers, this paper opens up the socio-material mechanisms of ‘market attachment’ through which, drawing on Franck Cochoy, the potential ‘captation’ of the defaulting consumer credit debtor occurs. It begins by setting out the analytical deficits in the contemporary analysis of consumer debt collection practices, before tracing the industry's responses to the particular problematic of consumer collections. It focuses on the role played by the ‘capture of affect’ in collections processes, building on existing work exploring socio-economic objects that may be described as ‘non-representational’. A richer understanding of the relationship between markets and the body is thus brought to Actor-Network Theory influenced studies of processes of ‘economization’. It follows the debtor's progress along collections ‘trajectories’, exploring different not necessarily compatible modes of captation being deployed by collectors attempting to enact defaulters as repayers, ranging from the quasi-therapeutic to the disciplinary. It concludes by examining the increasing role for performative forms of in vitro and in vivo experimentation being deployed in the collections process, through the use of econometric modelling techniques. Both the debtors' pasts and their actions as they move through the present are shown to provide the empirical grounding for a process of repeated affective ‘testing’, aimed at discovering – and profiting from – minute variations in debtor dispositions.
Social capital, risk preference and adoption of improved farm land management practices in Ethiopia

Many developing countries grapple with high rates of farmland degradation and low agricultural productivity amidst increasing climate variability. Considerable efforts have been exerted to promote the diffusion of improved farmland management to address these challenges. Despite these efforts, adoption rates, especially of soil conservation and water harvesting technologies, are still low, which has been the subject of investigation in several studies in Ethiopia and elsewhere. Most studies on the adoption of these technologies, however, tend to focus on economic incentives only, paying little attention to the role of social capital. This article provides evidence of the effects of different dimensions of social capital on innovation adoption across households holding different levels of risk aversion. We address this issue by using cross section and panel data from Ethiopia. Results show that social capital plays a significant role in enhancing the adoption of improved farmland management practices. We also find evidence that the effect of social capital across households with heterogeneous risk taking behavior is different.
The Association between Cigarette Smoking and Risk of Colorectal Cancer in a Large Prospective Cohort from the United States

Background: Many studies have reported a 20% to 60% increase in risk of colorectal cancer associated with active smoking. However, neither the U.S. Surgeon General nor the IARC have classified the relationship as causal because of concern about residual confounding. Methods: In a prospective study of 184,187 people followed from 1992 to 2005, we used Cox proportional hazard models to examine the relationship of cigarette smoking to incident colorectal cancer, controlling for screening and multiple known and putative risk factors. Information on smoking and time-varying covariates was updated in 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003. Results: The incidence of colorectal cancer was significantly higher in current [hazard ratios (HR), 1.27; 95% confidence intervals (CI), 1.06-1.52] and former smokers (HR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.11-1.36) compared with lifelong nonsmokers in analyses that controlled for 13 covariates, including screening. The relative risk was greatest among current smokers with at least 50 years of smoking (HR, 1.38; 95% CI, 1.04-1.84). Among former smokers, risk of colorectal cancer decreased with greater time since cessation (P trend = 0.0003), and also decreased with earlier age at cessation (P trend = 0.0014). No association was seen among former smokers who had quit before age of 40 years or abstained for 31 years or more. Conclusions: Long-term cigarette smoking is associated with colorectal cancer, even after controlling for screening and multiple other risk factors. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(12):3362–7)
Adenovirus Serotype 5 L4-22K and L4-33K Proteins Have Distinct Functions in Regulating Late Gene Expression

ABSTRACT Adenoviruses express up to 20 distinct mRNAs from five major late transcription unit (MLTU) regions, L1 to L5, by differential splicing and polyadenylation of the primary transcript. MLTU expression is regulated at transcriptional and posttranscriptional levels. The L4-33K protein acts as a splicing factor to upregulate several MLTU splice acceptor sites as the late phase progresses. The L4 region also expresses a 22K protein whose sequence is related to the sequence of L4-33K. L4-22K is shown here also to have an important role in regulating the pattern of MLTU gene expression. An adenovirus genome containing a stop codon in the L4-22K open reading frame expressed low levels of both structural and nonstructural late proteins compared to the wild-type (wt) adenovirus genome; a decrease in intermediate proteins, IVa2 and IX, was also observed. However, early protein synthesis and replication were unaffected by the absence of L4-22K. Intermediate and late protein expression was restored to wt levels by L4-22K expressed in trans but not by L4-33K. Increased MLTU promoter activity, resulting from stabilization of the transcriptional activator IVa2 by L4-22K, made a small contribution to this restoration of late gene expression. However, the principal effect of L4-22K was on the processing of MLTU RNA into specific cytoplasmic mRNA. L4-22K selectively increased expression of penton mRNA and protein, whereas splicing to create penton mRNA is known not to be increased by L4-33K. These results indicate that L4-22K plays a key role in the early-late switch in MLTU expression, additional to and distinct from the role of L4-33K.
No, prime minister: explaining the House of Commons’ vote on intervention in Syria†

ABSTRACT On 29 August 2013, the UK House of Commons inflicted the first defeat on a Prime Minister over a matter of war and peace since 1782. Recalled to debate and vote on UK intervention in Syria, the Commons humbled the government and crucially impacted the development of UK foreign policy. This article places that vote, and the developments leading to it, in the context of the role of parliaments in security policy and explores the relationships between parliamentary influence, leadership, intra-party and intra-coalition politics, and public opinion. From an in-depth analysis of leaders’ statements and parliamentary debate, we find a combination of intra-party politics and party leadership were most significant. An additional factor – the role of historical precedent – was also important. Our analysis explores the fluidity and interconnectedness of the various factors for parliamentary influence in foreign policy and offers directions for future theoretical development and empirical research.
Functions and effectors of the Salmonella pathogenicity island 2 type III secretion system

Salmonella enterica uses two functionally distinct type III secretion systems encoded on the pathogenicity islands SPI‐1 and SPI‐2 to transfer effector proteins into host cells. A major function of the SPI‐1 secretion system is to enable bacterial invasion of epithelial cells and the principal role of SPI‐2 is to facilitate the replication of intracellular bacteria within membrane‐bound Salmonella ‐containing vacuoles (SCVs). Studies of mutant bacteria defective for SPI‐2‐dependent secretion have revealed a variety of functions that can be attributed to this secretion system. These include an inhibition of various aspects of endocytic trafficking, an avoidance of NADPH oxidase‐dependent killing, the induction of a delayed apoptosis‐like host cell death, the control of SCV membrane dynamics, the assembly of a meshwork of F‐actin around the SCV, an accumulation of cholesterol around the SCV and interference with the localization of inducible nitric oxide synthase to the SCV. Several effector proteins that are translocated across the vacuolar membrane in a SPI‐2‐dependent manner have now been identified. These are encoded both within and outside SPI‐2. The characteristics of these effectors, and their relationship to the physiological functions listed above, are the subject of this review. The emerging picture is of a multifunctional system, whose activities are explained in part by effectors that control interactions between the SCV and intracellular membrane compartments.
The Impact of Human Capital Investments on Pension Benefits

This article develops a model, with deferred compensation and severance pay, that predicts that workers bear all the costs and receive all the returns of human capital investments and that specific investments yield higher returns than general investments. This model also predicts that pensions, which efficiently defer compensation, will be positively related to specific investments. Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Older Men confirms these predictions; participation in company-sponsored training programs, proxying for specific investments, increases the probability of pension receipt and the level of benefits. More general training outside the firm has much smaller effects on pensions.
Uncertainty in homology inferences: assessing and improving genomic sequence alignment.

Sequence alignment underpins all of comparative genomics, yet it remains an incompletely solved problem. In particular, the statistical uncertainty within inferred alignments is often disregarded, while parametric or phylogenetic inferences are considered meaningless without confidence estimates. Here, we report on a theoretical and simulation study of pairwise alignments of genomic DNA at human-mouse divergence. We find that >15% of aligned bases are incorrect in existing whole-genome alignments, and we identify three types of alignment error, each leading to systematic biases in all algorithms considered. Careful modeling of the evolutionary process improves alignment quality; however, these improvements are modest compared with the remaining alignment errors, even with exact knowledge of the evolutionary model, emphasizing the need for statistical approaches to account for uncertainty. We develop a new algorithm, Marginalized Posterior Decoding (MPD), which explicitly accounts for uncertainties, is less biased and more accurate than other algorithms we consider, and reduces the proportion of misaligned bases by a third compared with the best existing algorithm. To our knowledge, this is the first nonheuristic algorithm for DNA sequence alignment to show robust improvements over the classic Needleman-Wunsch algorithm. Despite this, considerable uncertainty remains even in the improved alignments. We conclude that a probabilistic treatment is essential, both to improve alignment quality and to quantify the remaining uncertainty. This is becoming increasingly relevant with the growing appreciation of the importance of noncoding DNA, whose study relies heavily on alignments. Alignment errors are inevitable, and should be considered when drawing conclusions from alignments. Software and alignments to assist researchers in doing this are provided at http://genserv.anat. ox.ac. uk/grape/.
The Lucas critique in practice: theory without measurement

This paper investigates the empirical relevance of the Lucas critique. A database is constructed of all articles in the Social Science Citation Index that cite Lucas (1976). Those articles are characterized by the nature of the article, the context in which Lucas (1976) is cited, and the evidence presented on the Lucas critique. Virtually no evidence exists that empirically substantiates the Lucas critique. Empirical refutation of the Lucas critique by using tests of super exogeneity is illustrated with U.K. money demand. Numerous other studies similarly refute the Lucas critique for various empirical macro-economic relations.
Humanitarianism, Mercantilism, or Comprehensive Security? Disbursement Patterns of Japanese Foreign Aid

In 1967, The American Challenge appeared on the best-seller list of popular books in Europe. ' Written by French author Jean-Jacques S rvanSchreiber, it warned about the economic power and innovative capacity of U.S. firms and the danger that they posed to the political autonomy of West European countries. This concern with U.S. hegemony, however, seemed rather quickly displaced by events pointing to the rapid ascendance of Japan in international trade and finance. In 1979, barely a dozen years after the appearance of The American Challenge, Ezra Vogel published Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America.2 This book was followed by others with titles such as The Eastasia Edge,3 America Versus Japan,4 and Trading Places.5 Their authors expressed a combination of admiration for Japan's economic achievements and alarm over the escalating international tension resulting from the relative status adjustments (especially for the United States) implied by these achievements. Often American analysts emphasize the closed nature of Japan's society and economy and the relentless drive for foreign economic advantages by that country's government and corporate leaders. While erecting various formal and informal barriers for keeping foreign capital and goods out of their home islands, the Japanese have supposedly exploited to the fullest extent the easy accessibility of the American society and economy to obtain valuable technologies, market shares, and investment opportunities. Thus, their economic
The Democratic Effects of the Internet, 1994—2003

/ Since its inception and subsequent diffusion, the Internet has been lauded as a potent democratizing agent. Using macro-level panel data from 1994 to 2003, this study examined 152 countries and found that increased Internet diffusion was a meaningful predictor of more democratic regimes. This was shown to be most true in developed countries, where non-linear fixed effects regression models showed the highest coefficient estimates and largest observed associations. Consistent with media system dependency theory, greater effects were also demonstrated for countries that already were at least partially democratic where the Internet was more prevalent and thus more likely to fulfill a greater number of information functions. In addition, Internet diffusion and democracy demonstrated a positive, statistically significant relationship (but with a marginal observed association size) in developing countries where the average level of sociopolitical instability was much higher. The Internet therefore should not be employed as a modern `mobility multiplier' because of the strong associations and positive relationships it has shown with democracy but it should also not be ignored due to the democratic potential these results suggest.
The pulmonary endothelium in acute respiratory distress syndrome: insights and therapeutic opportunities

The pulmonary endothelium is a dynamic, metabolically active layer of squamous endothelial cells ideally placed to mediate key processes involved in lung homoeostasis. Many of these are disrupted in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a syndrome with appreciable mortality and no effective pharmacotherapy. In this review, we consider the role of the pulmonary endothelium as a key modulator and orchestrator of ARDS, highlighting advances in our understanding of endothelial pathobiology and their implications for the development of endothelial-targeted therapeutics including cell-based therapies. We also discuss mechanisms to facilitate the translation of preclinical data into effective therapies including the application of biomarkers to phenotype patients with ARDS with a predominance of endothelial injury and emerging biotechnologies that could enhance delivery, discovery and testing of lung endothelial-specific therapeutics.
Several recent investigations have examined the dynamic processes which drive ZI anomalies ¤ ( Robinson

This investigation performs both diagnostic analyses with NCEP/NCAR re-analysis data and forced, barotropic model calculations to examine the dynamical mechanisms associated with the growth and decay of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) teleconnection pattern. The diagnostic calculations include projection and composite analyses of each term in the stream-function-tendency equation. The results of the analyses reveal a complete life cycle of growth and decay within approximately two weeks. The positive NAO phase is found to develop after anomalous wavetrain propagation across the North Paci c to the east coast of North America. This contrasts with the negative NAO phase which appeared to develop in situ. Both high-frequency (period < 10 days) and low-frequency (period > 10 days) transient eddy  uxes drive the NAO growth. After the NAO anomaly attains its maximum amplitude, the high-frequency transient eddy  uxes continue to drive the NAO anomaly in a manner that is consistent with a positive feedback process. The decay of the NAO occurs through both the divergence term and the low-frequency transient eddy  uxes. The temporal and spatial properties of the divergence term are found to be consistent with Ekman pumping. These results illustrate many important differences between the NAO and Paci c/North American (PNA) teleconnection patterns, perhaps most striking being that the NAO life cycle is dominated by nonlinear processes, whereas the PNA evolution is primarily linear, In addition, the relation between the NAO and the zonal index is discussed.
Mediation or Moderation? The Role of R&D Investment in the Relationship between Corporate Governance and Firm Performance: Empirical Evidence from the Chinese it Industry

Manuscript Type. Empirical. Research Question/Issue. This paper explores whether R&D investment has a mediating and/or moderating effect on the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. Research Findings/Insights. This empirical study of Chinese IT‐industry listed companies during the 2007–2008 period shows that R&D investment does not moderate, but instead mediates the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. Theoretical/Academic Implications. This paper takes the perspective of technological innovation to empirically examine the effect of corporate governance on firm performance. This study makes a contribution to the literature by showing that technological innovation (i.e., R&D investment) mediates the effects of various governance mechanisms (i.e., ownership concentration, managerial compensation, and asset‐debt ratio) on firm performance. Practitioner/Policy Implications. The results provide important managerial implications for the practice of corporate governance in emerging economies. Companies in emerging economies can enhance technological innovation through maintaining relatively high ownership concentration, designing effective managerial compensation systems, and optimizing capital structure. In addition, emerging economies should adopt effective public policies on technological innovation to improve the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance.