Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Russian Capital Flight, Economic Reforms, and U.S. Interests: An Analysis

Russian capital flight is a longstanding problem with negative effects on the partially reformed Russian economy. Recent reports of Russian money laundering and other financial scandals involving the Russian Central Bank, the Bank of New York, other commercial banks, and even former President Yeltsin’s household involve forms of capital flight and have drawn greater attention to the problem. They have been the subjects of Congressional hearings and have focused the attention of Members of Congress and others on U.S. interests in Russia and the effectiveness of U.S. policies. Recent legislation has been proposed as a result of concern over the these scandals and Russian capital flight. This report will be updated as events warrant. For additional information see CRS Issue Brief, Russia: Issue Brief, IB92089. Russian Capital Flight, Economic Reforms, and U.S. Interests: An Analysis
Finance, economic development and the transition: the East German case

The role of banks in the transition concerns three issues: the bad loans problem, the role of banks in providing a solution to the problems of corporate governance of privatized enterprises and the access of new enterprises to finance for investment. This paper shows how the combination of early privatization of the banking system plus financial restructuring of enterprises by the Treuhand prevented the development of a 'bad loans' problem in East Germany. The merits of banks as large stakeholders in privatized enterprises has been frequently debated in Eastern Europe. Although the role of banks as owners of non-financial companies in West Germany is frequently exaggerated, there was a widespread public expectation that they would play a considerable role in the restructuring of East German enterprises. We show that their role in acquiring stakes in privatized firms in East Germany has been negligible and suggest reasons for this outcome. East Germany is characterized by a very high level of investment and the second part of the paper investigates how the financial system can affect the relationship between investment and growth. It has been argued that the inefficiencies of both development and commercial banking in the Italian Mezzogiorno have contributed to the failure there of high levels of investment to translate into growth. The efficiency characteristics of development and commercial banking in Southern Italy are contrasted with those in East Germany. Considerable attention is given to the extent of competition in commercial banking and to the delegation by the development banks of screening and monitoring activities to the commercial banks, which characterizes the German system. It is argued that the German banking system which has been transferred to East Germany does not suffer from the inefficiencies found in Italy. Evidence is provided for the convergence of the structure of banking in East and West Germany. Nevertheless, in spite of the extensive access of East German firms to development bank finance, evidence is provided that the financial system does not foster investment in intangibles such as in marketing and in R&D. This has serious consequences for those firms which are not owned by Western firms and hence do not have access to the retained earnings of the owner, nor to the ability of the owner to guarantee loans from the banking system.
Direct Corticospinal Control of Force Derivative

During simultaneous generation of static and dynamic forces, motor cortical signals only predict the dynamic components, suggesting a key role in the coding of force changes. However, such a role is obscured by uncertainties regarding the representation of dynamic force signals in corticospinal outputs. We used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the motor cortex in humans during a task that dissociated the direction of instantaneous net force and that of force derivative. The direction of TMS-evoked force outputs was closely associated with that of the force derivative, and had no relationship with that of the net force generated simultaneously, even though the magnitude of the instantaneous net force largely exceeded that of the force derivative. This observation supports the hypothesis that during dynamic force generation, the motor cortex and the corticospinal system assume a pivotal role in coding the direction of force changes, through selective recruitment of spinal motoneurons.
Identification and the Liquidity Effect of a Monetary Policy Shock

Conventional wisdom holds that unanticipated expansionary monetary policy shocks cause transient but persistent decreases in real and nominal interest rates. However a number of econometric studies argue that the evidence favors the opposite view, namely that these shocks actually raise, rather than lower, short term interest rates. We show that this conclusion is not robust to the measure of monetary aggregate used or to the assumptions made to identify monetary policy disturbances. For example, when our analysis is done using non borrowed reserves, we find strong evidence in favor of the conventional view. Existing challenges to the conventional view lack credibility not just because of their fragility. They are based upon measures of policy disturbances which generate seemingly implausible implications about things other than interest rates.
Silver Antimicrobial Dressings in Wound Management : A Comparison of Antibacterial , Physical , and Chemical Characteristics

Disclosure: All authors are paid employees of ConvaTec Ltd, Flintshire, United Kingdom. Until recently, local wound infection has been a challenge with few management options. However, the advent of advanced wound dressings containing topical antimicrobial agents, such as silver, has provided a new approach to the control of wound pathogens. Silver has proven antimicrobial activity that includes antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). Its role as an antimicrobial agent is particularly attractive, as it has a broad spectrum of antimicrobial activity , 6 with minimal toxicity toward mammalian cells at low concentrations and has a less likely tendency than antibiotics to induce resistance due to its activity at multiple bacterial target sites. Topical creams or solutions containing silver (eg, silver sulfadiazine) have long been used as a mainstay of wound management in burn patients who are especially susceptible to infection. H o w e v e r , disadvantages to their use include staining the skin and toxicity. In addition, the need for frequent removal and reapplication of silver sulfadiazine due to the development of pseudoeschar is both time consuming for professionals and painful for p a t i e n t s . , 9 A range of antimicrobial dressings containing silver either incorporated within or applied to the dressing are now available for clinical use. 0 This new class of dressings is designed to provide the antimicrobial activity of topical silver in a more convenient application. However, the dressings themselves differ considerably in the nature of their silver content and in their physical and chemical p r o p e r t i e s . This study compares the i n v i t r o a n t i b a c t e r i a l activity of 7 such dressings against 2 common wound pathogens, Staphylococcus aureus a n d Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The correlation between silver content and/or silver release from each dressing and its antibacterial effect is examined, and factors relating to the provision of an optimal environment for wound healing are compared to provide a basis for an overall assessment of the clinically valuable properties of each dressing.
Informality in Egypt: a Stepping Stone or a Dead End?

In the last few decades, the informal sector has played a major role in many of the LDC’s labor markets. Yet, little is known about the dynamics of this sector. This paper addresses an important question, namely whether informal employment is a stepping stone, as first argued by economists such as Fields (1975), or is it a dead end? Using evidence from the Egyptian Labor Market Panel Survey 2006, and controlling for selectivity in informal jobs, we estimate the probability of “graduating” from informal employment to semi-formal and formal jobs. The empirical findings suggest that the mobility from informal to semi-formal/formal employment is highly segmented along education and gender in Egypt. Overall, it seems that informal employment is a stepping stone for highly educated male workers, but is a dead end for the uneducated, and for female workers.
Evidence for short-time divergence and long-time conservation of tissue-specific expression after gene duplication

Gene duplication is one of the main mechanisms by which genomes can acquire novel functions. It has been proposed that the retention of gene duplicates can be associated to processes of tissue expression divergence. These models predict that acquisition of divergent expression patterns should be acquired shortly after the duplication, and that larger divergence in tissue expression would be expected for paralogs, as compared to orthologs of a similar age. Many studies have shown that gene duplicates tend to have divergent expression patterns and that gene family expansions are associated with high levels of tissue specificity. However, the timeframe in which these processes occur have rarely been investigated in detail, particularly in vertebrates, and most analyses do not include direct comparisons of orthologs as a baseline for the expected levels of tissue specificity in absence of duplications. To assess the specific contribution of duplications to expression divergence, we combine here phylogenetic analyses and expression data from human and mouse. In particular, we study differences in spatial expression among human-mouse paralogs, specifically duplicated after the radiation of mammals, and compare them to pairs of orthologs in the same species. Our results show that gene duplication leads to increased levels of tissue specificity and that this tends to occur promptly after the duplication event.
A New Dynamic Pricing Scheme with Priority based Tree generation and Scheduling for Mobile Networks

A new and improved model of dynamic pricing scheme for handling of congestion vis-a-vis providing improved QoS for mobile networks is proposed in this paper. The user calls are divided into multiple priority levels and the call requests are scheduled by developing a tree structure. A very effective scheduling algorithm has been developed and analyzed and in this process a unique path sequence for each cell could also be identified.
The Piketty Curve and the Elasticity of Substitution

Thomas Piketty’s (2014) recent book has been the occasion of a good deal of discussion, much of it centered around his references to the elasticity of substitution between labor and capital. He presents evidence that suggests that capital’s share rises as the capital-labor ratio rises. In a very simple growth model, this would mean that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is greater than one. However, many economists probably concur with a criticism by Lawrence Summers: (2014) “I know of no study suggesting that … the elasticity of substitution is less than one, and I know of quite a few suggesting the contrary. ” A number of such studies are reviewed in Leon-Ledesma et. al (2010, see esp. Table 1, p. 1335) and most do indeed estimate elasticities of substitution less than one; however, they also assume that technical progress is either Hicks-Neutral or factor-augmenting and, if factor-augmenting, that the rates of factor augmentation are exogenously given1. Piketty does not split definitional hairs, referring sometimes to capital claims and sometimes to the imputed competitive income of the capital input. As Summers notes, he abstracts from depreciation and, barring a few mostly negative comments, does not treat technical progress nor human capital as important determinants of the income shares. Thus, clearly, the studies referenced by Leon-Ledesma et. al do not apply to Piketty’s argument. On the other hand, there is some room for conjecture as to how Piketty’s thinking might be represented in mathematical economic models of economic growth. This paper will briefly sketch a model influenced by Stokey (1991), Romer (1986), and Duffy et al (2004). in which trends like those reported by Piketty can arise depending on the differences between the elasticities of substitution among physical capital, human-technological capital, and raw labor. For this model, “capital” will be understood in a strictly neoclassical way, as an index of an aggregate of heterogeneous durable produced means of production, treated “as if” a divisible and homogenous input. The paper will then reconsider the relation of Piketty’s writing to a model of this kind.
Non‐Linear Equity Valuation: An Empirical Analysis

type="main"> Legacy COMPUSTAT Data pertaining to 226,165 firm-year observations covering a 57 year period (1950–2006) across all industrial groups are used to empirically assess the likely form and magnitude of the biases that arise from linear equity valuation models. Linear equity valuation models dominate the empirical analysis of the literature but ignore a firm's growth and adaptation options, which, by default, are non-linear in their determining variables. Given this, an orthogonal polynomial fitting procedure as summarized in Ataullah et al. (2009), which does take account of the growth and adaptation options available to firms, is used to obtain a power series expansion for the relationship between equity prices and their determining variables. Our purpose is to assess whether the inclusion of the non-linear terms associated with the growth and adaptation options available to firms can provide a more complete description of the relationship between equity prices and their determining variables when compared to the simple linear models that characterize the empirical research of this area of the literature. Our empirical analysis classifies firms into negative efficiency, low efficiency, and high efficiency levels and then for each efficiency level, estimates the parameters implied by the Ataullah et al. (2009) orthogonal polynomial fitting procedure. Our results show that there is a very strong non-linear relationship between equity value and its determining variables although the nature of the relationship varies according to the efficiency level considered.
An assessment of variability generated in F2 generation of four crosses of finger millet (Eleusine coracana (Gaertn))

Improvement of economic characters like yield through selection is conditioned by the nature and magnitude of variability existing in such populations. However, the phenotypic expression of complex character like yield is a combination of genotype, environment and their interaction. This indicates the need for partition of overall variability into heritable and non-heritable components with the help of appropriate statistical techniques. The results of this investigation carried out in F2 generation of four crosses of finger millet to quantify the variability created along with heritability and genetic advances for important yield and attributing characters. In general moderate to high broad sense heritability was observed for days to fifty per cent flowering, finger length, 1000 seed weight, whereas high broad sense heritability was observed for plant height, total tillers per plant and number of productive tillers per plant. A very high genetic advance was observed for total tillers per plant, productive tillers per plant, finger number per main ear, finger length and weight of main ear. Moderate to low genetic advance for plant height, days to fifty per cent flowering and 1000 seed weight were observed.
Preoperative Intra-abdominal Sepsis, Not Penetrating Behavior Itself, Is Associated With Worse Postoperative Outcome After Bowel Resection for Crohn Disease

AbstractIt is generally believed that penetrating behavior is associated with worse surgical outcomes in Crohn disease (CD). We hypothesized that intra-abdominal sepsis (IAS), but not penetrating behavior itself, contributes to postoperative morbidity in patients undergoing bowel resection for CD.Patients who underwent surgery from April 2010 to April 2014 were retrospectively identified from a prospectively maintained database. Demographic information and preoperative and operative data were collected. The outcomes following surgery in patients who had penetrating disease with or without IAS versus nonpenetrating CD were compared.Of 288 patients, 180 had penetrating CD, including 54 who had IAS. Preoperative characteristics were similar between the groups, except for serum albumin, abdominal drainage, and prior bowel resection. Patients with penetrating CD with IAS were more likely to have a stoma, surgical site complications, postoperative IAS complications, and major complications than patients with penetrating CD without IAS or nonpenetrating CD. There were no significant differences between patients with penetrating CD without IAS and nonpenetrating CD. The postoperative outcome was strengthened after propensity-score matching analysis. Moreover, penetrating CD with IAS (odds ratio [OR], 13.034; P = 0.004) is a risk predictor for major postoperative complications, and preoperative serum albumin (OR, 0.095; P = 0.002) and preoperative enteral nutrition (OR, 0.203, P = 0.049) are protective.Penetrating CD without IAS did not adversely affect postoperative outcome after bowel resection compared with penetrating CD with IAS. These results may revise the notion that all patients with penetrating CD have worse postoperative complications.
On the interdependence of cognition and emotion

Affect and cognition have long been treated as independent entities, but in the current review we suggest that affect and cognition are in fact highly interdependent. We open the article by discussing three classic views for the independence of affect. These are (i) the affective independence hypothesis, that emotion is processed independently from cognition, (ii) the affective primacy hypothesis, that evaluative processing precedes semantic processing, and (iii) the affective automaticity hypothesis, that affectively potent stimuli commandeer attention and evaluation is automatic. We argue that affect is not independent from cognition, that affect is not primary to cognition, nor is affect automatically elicited. The second half of the paper discusses several instances of how affect influences cognition. We review experiments showing affective involvement in perception, semantic activation, and attitude activation. We conclude that one function of affect is to regulate cognitive processing.
Corporate Governance and Depository Institutions Failure: The Case of an Emerging Market Economy

In this paper we study the relationship that exists between ownership and governance structure of depository institutions (DI) on one side, and the dominant cause of failure on the other. Extant theory implies that in stock owned DI where management is either well controled (through markets or board control) or interests are aligned with those of shareholders, the dominant cause of failure will be moral hazard between shareholders and debtholders, manifested in balance sheet or off-balance sheet risk taking. On the other hand, in DI of diffuse ownership with poor management control or where management's interests are not alligned with those of owners, the dominant cause of failure will be agency costs, manifested in expense preference behavior that leads to failure. We exploit the opportunity that offers the Colombian crisis of banks and financial cooperatives (FC) and the relatively good quality of data available for this country to perform the study. Our objective is to establish empirically the relative importance of these two conflicts as determinants of insolvency in DI. Results suggest that, in the case of Colombia, moral hazard is a key factor in explaining bank failure while agency costs explain insolvencies among FC. In state-owned banks both moral hazard and agency costs are signifficant in explaining failure.
Impact of Foreign Direct Investment on Gross Domestic Product (A Case of SAARC Countries)

This paper investigates the impact of foreign direct investment on Growth (GDP) of SAARC countries. This relationship is tested by applying multiple regression models. The change in GDP is taken as dependent viable while FDI and inflation are considered as independent variables. The data used for this is ranging from year 2001 to 2010 of SAARC Countries. The result shows that the overall model is significant. There is a positive and significant relationship between GDP and FDI while an insignificant relationship between GDP and inflation.
Severity of disease and clinical outcomes in patients with hospital-acquired pneumonia due to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains not influenced by the presence of the Panton-Valentine leukocidin gene.

BACKGROUND Patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) strains carrying the Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) gene have severe clinical presentation and poor clinical outcomes. Antibiotics that suppress toxin production have been suggested for the management of these patients. The objective of this study was to compare the severity of disease and clinical outcomes of patients with hospital-acquired pneumonia/ventilator-associated pneumonia (HAP/VAP) infected with MRSA carrying the PVL gene with those patients infected with MRSA strains that do not carry the PVL gene. METHODS This was a multicenter observational study of patients with HAP and VAP. MRSA isolates were subjected to genetic analysis to define the presence of the PVL gene, the USA type and the staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec type. Severity of disease was evaluated with the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II (APACHE II) score. The primary clinical outcome was mortality at hospital discharge. RESULTS A total of 109 cases of MRSA HAP/VAP were evaluated. The incidence of PVL(+) MRSA was 27%. APACHE II score at diagnosis of HAP/VAP was 21 ± 8 for PVL(+) MRSA and 20 ± 6 for PVL(-) MRSA (P = .67). Mortality was 10% (3/29) for patients with PVL(+) MRSA versus 10% (8/80) for patients with PVL(-) MRSA (P > .99). CONCLUSIONS In patients with HAP or VAP due to MRSA, severity of disease and clinical outcomes are not influenced by the presence of the PVL gene. Therapeutic strategies directed to block PVL exotoxin may not impact outcomes in these patients.