Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Seismic array detection of subducted oceanic crust in the lower mantle

[1] We analyze short-period precursory energy to PP that can be observed in seismograms in the distance range from ∼95° to 105° to infer the behavior of subducted slabs beneath western Pacific subduction zones. PP is a P wave once reflected at the free surface between the source and receiver. Using high-resolution seismic array techniques, we analyze the incidence angle, timing, and azimuth of the PP precursors. The precursory energy is resolved to originate from off great circle path azimuths and is consistent with scattering by small-scale heterogeneities. Assuming single scattering, upper mantle- and midmantle-derived scatterer locations show a strong geographical and depth correlation to high seismic velocities in tomographic studies. Scattering locations beneath the Tonga and Mariana subduction zones outline continuous dipping structures to a depth of at least 1000 km, consistent with scattering associated with subducted former oceanic lithosphere. Scatterer locations uniquely explain the timing, slowness, and back azimuth of the PP precursors at the array. The observed reflections can be explained with the velocity impedance variations expected for high-pressure basalt juxtaposed with pyrolite or harzburgite and thus may be due to the paleo-Mohorovicic discontinuity within subducted slabs. These results are consistent with basaltic crust penetrating into the lower mantle. This method provides a means for tracking the location of geochemically enriched former oceanic crust in the lower mantle by using recordings of globally distributed seismic arrays and is complementary to longer-wavelength constraints on high seismic velocity slabs inferred from tomography.
Increasing Agglomeration or Dispersion? Industrial Specialization and Geographic Concentration in NAFTA

We analyze industrial specialization and geographic concentration patterns within the NAFTA area during 1988-2000 and examine the determinant of spatial concentration. NAFTA countries have become increasingly dissimilar over time. A changing spatial structure of total NAFTA manufacturing is also evident. Manufaturing is increasingly relocating to Mexico, wich comes at the expense of the US. In addition , tere is evidence of a general upward trend in the degree of relative geographic concentration of North-American industries. Labor-intensive and low-technology activities appear to be the most spatially concentrated industries, exhibiting a strong increasing trend. Comparative advantage factors largely explain geographic concentration of industries across NAFTA countries, indicating the empirical relevance of traditional trade theory in the NAFTA case.
Cerebral ischemia and CNS transplantation: differential effects of grafted fetal rat striatal cells and human neurons derived from a clonal cell line

STROKE mortality has declined over recent decades, prompting a demand for the development of effective rehabilitative therapies for stroke survivors. This effort has been facilitated by significant progress in replicating the behavioral and neuropathological changes of authentic human cerebral ischemia using relevant animal models. Since the rodent model of middle cerebral artery occlusion mimics several motor abnormalities seen in clinical cerebral ischemia, we have utilized this model to investigate treatment strategies for stroke. The present study explored the potential benefits of neural transplantation of fetal rat striatal cells or human neurons derived from a clonal embryonal carcinoma cell line to correct the abnormalities associated with cerebral ischemia. We report here that ischemia-induced behavioral dysfunctions were ameliorated by the neural grafts as early as 1 month post-transplantation. Of note, transplantation of human neurons induced a significantly more robust recovery than fetal rat striatal grafts. Thus, the logistical and ethical concerns about the use of fetal striatal cells for transplantation therapy can be eliminated by exploiting cell line-derived human neurons as alternative graft sources. Transplantation of human neurons has a therapeutic potential for treatment of behavioral deficits associated with cerebral ischemia.
Bond Spreads and Economic Activity in Eight European Economies

This paper provides a new insight into the relationship between financial market tightness and real activity using a unique new database extracted from Bloomberg to construct a credit spread index from 500 corporate bonds issued in eight European countries. We find that European bond spread measures have a significant negative relationship with four real activity measures at horizons of one quarter to two years ahead. The relationship is robust to inclusion of measures of monetary policy tightness, other leading indicator variables and factors extracted from a large macro dataset, as well as alternative measures of the bond spreads. These results provide strong support for models previously only evaluated on US data. We find that a sub-set of northern European countries have similar sensitivity of real GDP to bond spreads, but others have higher spreads and greater sensitivity to these spreads, which reveals a diverse response in Europe to financial market tightness.
The stroke offspring study: is parental stroke history of value in targeted risk factor screening?

Aim This study aimed to compare the prevalence of stroke risk factors among people with a parental history of stroke to those in a control group of individuals, of similar age, gender and social class, with no parental stroke history. Background Parental stroke increases an individual’s risk of stroke, but little is known of the potential value of using this information in targeted screening for primary prevention in general practice. Method We sent questionnaires to 300 randomly selected individuals aged 40–65 years, in each of 11 different general practices in Northern Ireland. Among 1061 responses received within six weeks, 332 reported a parental history of stroke (31.3%). We matched respondents with (cases) and without (controls) a parental history of stroke on characteristics of age, gender and socioeconomic status. Matched pairs were invited to attend a consultation at which their diet and exercise habits were assessed using validated questionnaires and height, weight, blood pressure and serum lipids and glucose were measured. Findings Matched data were available for 199 case–control pairs (398 individuals). Mean systolic and diastolic blood pressures were significantly higher in cases than in paired controls (systolic 146.3 versus 140.6 mmHg (P < 0.01); diastolic 87.7 versus 85.0 mmHg (P = 0.014)). Cases consumed more alcohol than their paired controls (13.8 versus 10.1 U/week (P < 0.01)), but their measures of body mass index, lipids, diabetes, diet and exercise did not differ significantly. The results of this study suggest that screening offspring of patients with stroke in respect of blood pressure has potential value in identifying people likely to benefit from primary prevention, but do not support the adoption of a targeted screening strategy for other commonly cited stroke risk factors.
Factors Influencing Corporate Environmental Disclosure

In this paper, we have studied the factors that influence the environmental disclosures of Italian listed companies. We also aimed to verify the effects produced by the introduction of specific legislation (albeit of a voluntary nature) on environmental disclosures. The analysis has the advantage of including all of the informational documents produced by the company. The analysis shows an (excessively) low level of disclosure of environmental information by the companies examined. The econometric analysis then shows, contrary to our hypothesis and the results of previous analyses carried out in other countries, a negative and statistically significant relationship between environmental disclosures, the presences of minority shareholders and large auditors and the listing of the company, including in foreign markets. We lastly observed that the introduction of ad hoc legislation as purely voluntary only affects the contents of quantitative environmental disclosures, which are unsuitable for a highly industrialized developed country. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment
Benchmarking interno en una central de compras de agencias de viajes

The tourism sector is one of the most dynamic of our economy, but one that needs to implement new strategies to maintain its level of contribution to the GDP. The objective of this paper is to determine, through a probabilistic conjoint analysis using the Rasch model, the relative importance of the crucial factors in tourism supply for a strategic alliance between travel agencies: Travel Advisors Guild (TAG). The results highlight the positioning of the agencies that make up the TAG, as well as internal competitive imbalances.
Creativity and tourism in the city

Creativity has become increasingly important for the development of tourism in cities in recent years. As competition between cities grows, they increasingly seek to distinguish themselves through creative strategies. In the field of tourism, however, such strategies may arguably be counter-productive, as the race to produce distinction often results in cities adopting similar creative development models. In particular, many cities rely on the ideas of creativity ‘gurus’ such as Richard Florida and Charles Landry to provide creative solutions to a wide range of cultural, social and economic problems. However, by following such exogenous prescriptions, adopting forms of ‘fast policy’ and copying ideas from other ‘creative cities’ through ‘policy tourism’, the result is often a form of serial reproduction, unattractive to the very tourists cities seek to attract. This review article examines the search of many cities for distinction through creativity, and analyses the development of different forms of creativity, including creative industries and creative cities strategies and creative tourism. It argues that the shift away from tangible to intangible competitive advantage is continuing, with a trend towards relational forms of tourism based on creativity and embedded knowledge. These processes are illustrated by reviews of the literature relating to cities around the world.
Institutional Readiness and Small to Medium‐Sized Enterprise Alliance Formation

The focus of this study, in contrast to research that explores the strategic choice by small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to form strategic alliances, is a characterization of the institutional attributes that enable alliance formation. This enabled state is defined as “institutional readiness,” which is the capacity of the institutional environment to support the formation of SME‐based strategic alliances. Utilizing institutional theory as a lens, this study sets forth a theoretical framework for institutional readiness and tests the framework using a survey of 2,054 SMEs from eight countries. Though it has been speculated for some time that institutional forces might have an important effect on firm behavior, to date, in contrast to the current research, there has been little research exploring these effects that is based upon multiple country settings and large samples of SMEs. Additionally, in contrast to the present study, few studies have been designed to rigorously test a broad set of institutional factors and in so doing provide a clear conceptualization of the interplay of institutional and firm attributes in the formation of interfirm alliances. The findings of this study suggest that in the case of SME‐based alliance formation, institutions do matter and in some cases, in unexpected and surprising ways.
Therapist responsiveness and patient engagement in therapy

Abstract This study tests the hypothesis that therapist responsiveness in the first two sessions of therapy relates to three measures of early patient engagement in treatment. Using videotapes and data from the NIMH Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program (TDCRP), an instrument was developed to measure therapist responsiveness in the first two sessions of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Interpersonal Psychotherapy. A factor measuring positive therapeutic atmosphere, as well as a global item of therapist responsiveness, predicted both the patient's positive perception of the therapeutic relationship after the second session and the patient's remaining in therapy for more than four sessions. A negative therapist behavior factor also predicted early termination. Factors measuring therapist attentiveness and early empathic responding did not predict the engagement variables.
Internationalization and varieties of capitalism: the limited effects of cross-national coordination of economic activities on the nature of business systems

The increasing internationalization of economic activities in the late twentieth century has encouraged the belief that a new form of cross-national economic organization is becoming established and replacing existing forms of capitalism. Both the intensification of international competition and growth of managerial coordination across borders are seen as generating the convergence of currently separate business systems. However, the extent of such internationalization is less than often claimed, especially when compared to the late nineteenth century, and the processes by which it will lead to such convergence remain obscure. Since the different varieties of capitalist economic organization in Europe, Asia and the Americas developed over some time interdependently with dominant societal institutions, the ways in which they change as a result of internationalization are path dependent and reflect their historical legacies as well as current institutional linkages. Qualitative changes in central business system characteristics, such as ownership relations, non-ownership coordination and employment policies, are therefore unlikely to be rapid or to result solely from internationalization. Furthermore, the ways in which firms from different business systems internationalize reflect their varied natures and strategies which are unlikely to alter greatly unless key institutions alter. If multinational firms do develop different characteristics from national competitors, their impact on their domestic and host business systems will likewise depend on a number of strong conditions. Similarly, the establishment of a distinctive and dominant 'global' business system is only likely in very restrictive circumstances.
A region and data hiding based error concealment scheme for images

Traditional error concealment systems for still images compressed in the discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain and transmitted over lossy channels are not suitable for JPEG2000 compressed images. In this paper a novel error concealment scheme for images compressed in wavelet domain is proposed. It is based on data hiding techniques to reconstruct missing data of the region-of-interest (ROI). The ROI and region-of-background (ROB) of images are transformed into the wavelet domain using the shape-adaptive wavelet transform and coded with the rate-distortion optimized coder. Embedded data are truncated from the coded bitstream of the ROI and embedded into the wavelet coefficients of the ROB. A fragile watermark is embedded into the ROI to detect errors. When a data loss occurs in the bitstream of the ROI, embedded data are extracted for reconstruction. Experiments show the efficiency of this scheme. It is also shown that this scheme has the capability of detecting and correcting malicious tampers in the ROI.
Analysis of early neonatal deaths in Yekatit 12 hospital, Addis Ababa.

BACKGROUND Worldwide approximately 4 million newborns die each year. Three quarters of the neonatal deaths happen in the first week after birth. OBJECTIVE The objective is to study the factors associated with early neonatal deaths and the clinical causes of these deaths. METHODS A retrospective record review of all early neonatal deaths among the live births was conducted at Yekatit 12 Hospital for the period of Oct. 2006- Sep. 2007. RESULTS There were 2301 live births with 59 early neonatal deaths making the mortality rate 25.6 per 1000 live births. Early neonatal deaths were higher in males, in neonates with low birth weight, low apgar score and maternal age of 40 years and above compared to their counterparts, respectively. CONCLUSION Most of the factors associated with early neonatal deaths can be corrected with proper perinatal care. Training of midwives on neonatal resuscitation techniques will help reduce early neonatal deaths.
The Value of Alpha Forecasts in Portfolio Construction

This study examines a portfolio strategy which selects stocks using the undisclosed monthly holdings of Australian active fund managers. When considering a large range of strategies incorporating fund portfolio holdings information, the top performing strategies are robust to data snooping and are both statistically significant and economically significant when incorporating transaction costs. These strategies are short term in nature, with statistically significant performance lasting up to nine months. When we account for look-ahead bias in the formation of a strategy, we find statistically significant alpha when following the best performing strategy holding 20 stocks or more in the previous month.
The impact of firm-specific information during the registration period on initial public offering pricing

In this article, we gather public information at the firm level during the initial public offering (IPO) registration period and examine its impact on IPO pricing. First, we show that the firm origin and the number of IPO amendments filed during the registration period are correlated with negative news, whereas positive news is essentially driven by previous IPO experience and underwriter prestige. Second, our main findings reveal that the type of firm-specific information (good or bad news) during the registration period has implications for initial returns, pricing and trading volume. These results support the idea that the pricing process of IPOs is not completely efficient.
Factor analytic investigation of Canadians' population health risk perceptions: the role of locus of control over health risks

To better understand how health risks are conceptualised by the Canadian public, exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic techniques were applied to data from a recent national telephone survey on health risk perception (N = 1503). Hazards assessed comprised an array of 30 items selected a priori by a panel of experts to represent the following five determinants of population health: the physical environment, biology, lifestyle, the social environment and healthcare. Respondents in the survey rated each hazard in terms of perceived risk to the health of Canadians. Rather than the hypothesised five-factor model, findings supported a three-factor model, with biochemical, lifestyle and social health risk perceptions emerging as key factors explaining the public's health risk perceptions. Although the observed model differed from expectations, it maintained some elements of current population health models. Further analyses revealed that biochemical, lifestyle and social health risk perceptions were differentially associated with beliefs about the locus of control over health risks. Findings are contrasted with those of a similar analysis of data from a comparable national survey conducted in Canada in 1992, and are discussed in relation to trends in discourse on health risk over the past decade.
Intraday Stock Price Reactions to Interim-Quarter versus Fourth-Quarter Earnings Announcements

This study investigates intraday patterns of quarterly return-earnings relations. We find that fourth quarter announcements exhibit a lower earnings response coefficient but a more rapid adjustment to new equilibrium levels of prices and a higher R2 than interim quarter announcements. While prior short event window studies document that interim quarter earnings have greater explanatory power than fourth quarter earnings or annual earnings, our analysis indicates that the prior results may be driven by the use of two-day event window that is much wider than what it takes for the market to adjust to fourth quarter announcements.
Course of Disease and Clinical Management of Patients with Poorly Differentiated Thyroid Carcinoma

Simple Summary Poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma (PDTC) represents a rare but aggressive variant of thyroid carcinoma and contributes to a significant proportion of thyroid carcinoma-associated deaths. Studies on PDTC are rare; therefore, we aim to assess the clinical course of these patients, evaluate the prognostic value of response to initial radioiodine therapy and identify risk factors for poor prognosis to optimize the clinical management of patients with PDCT. Abstract Background: In patients with poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma, the clinical course and prognostic value of response to initial radioiodine therapy is evaluated. Methods: In 47 patients, clinical and imaging features were analyzed. Patients were stratified in no (NED), biochemical (B-ED) and structural evidence of disease (S-ED) assessed at the first diagnostic control and its impact on survival was evaluated. Further, possible risk factors for a shorter disease-specific survival rate (DSS) were analyzed. Results: In total, 17/47 patients consisted of NED, 10/47 were B-ED and 20/47 S-ED patients. At the last follow-up, 18/47 patients were NED, 2/47 patients B-ED and 27/47 patients S-ED. The median survival time was only reached for the S-ED group (median 3.9 years, 95%CI 2.8–5.1 years) and was not reached in the B-ED and NED groups. Metastases were diagnosed by a 18F-FDG-PET/CT scan in all cases and a multivariate analysis showed that the PET-positivity of metastases was the only significant predictor of DSS (p = 0.036). Conclusion: The response to initial surgery and radioiodine therapy in PDTC patients can achieve an excellent outcome and a further follow-up should be refined based on findings at the first diagnostic control. However, patients with an incomplete response and metastatic patients who become mostly radioiodine refractory show a significantly shorter survival, which makes accurate staging by 18F-FDG-PET/CT imaging crucial.
The Europeanisation of Green Parties: Exploring the EU's Impact

The use of the concept 'Europeanisation' has burgeoned, though its link with party adaptation and change is still under-explored. This article concedes the difficulties, outlined recently by Peter Mair and others, of linking Europeanisation and party change. However, it suggests that a more modest but systematic examination of the EU's impact on one party family (European Green parties) reveals both empirical and conceptual insights. Examining the Europeanisation of Green parties across several dimensions (party ideology, institutions and transnational activities) this article argues that Europeanisation has accelerated the mellowing of Green ideology and 'professionalisation' of Green party politics.