Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Integrating gender issues into national budgetary policies and procedures: some policy options

The national budget generally has different implications for women and men, but it is put together without consideration of gender equality. Tools are being developed to integrate gender analysis into appraisal of delivery of public services, composition of expenditure and revenue, and overall budget strategy. A gender-aware budget statement can indicate the extent to which the budget is gender-balanced, and be used to monitor resource allocations and outcomes. The Commonwealth Secretariat is facilitating a pilot project to explore the practical use of some of these tools in preparation and presentation of the budget in South Africa, Sri Lanka and Barbados. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Study of Water-Polymer Interactions and Self-Diffusion of Water in Polymer Films

The diffusivity and distribution of water in the butyl methacrylate and methacrylic acid copolymer films swollen in water have been investigated using the NMR relaxation and pulse field gradient (PFG) NMR techniques. The contributions of polymer matrix protons, surface water and bound water have been determined from 1H NMR spectra and relaxation functions. PFG NMR experiments showed that the echo attenuation function depends on the diffusion time indicating that water inside the swollen film is trapped in restricted confinement. The data obtained have been discussed using published physical models for diffusion of water in polymeric materials. The sizes of pores inside the film were estimated using the published model approaches giving the range of 0.8-1.0 μm. Magnetization decays as well as the spin-spin relaxation times of water saturated polymer films were also determined in this study. NMR relaxation provided additional information on the water distribution in the porous microstructure. The volume-averaged water mobility decreased with increasing hydrophobic content of the polymers.
Factor V Leiden and the risk of stillbirth in a German population

Summary An association between the factor V Leiden variant and an increased risk of pregnancy loss has been reported. Most previous studies were performed with clinically recruited patients and controls. This approach may cause selection bias. The present analysis was performed with the aim to investigate the association between the factor V Leiden mutation and the risk of stillbirth in a population-based sample. The Study of Health in Pomerania (SHIP) is a survey that was carried out in North East Germany. A random sample from the population aged 20 to 79 years was taken. The total SHIP population comprised 4,310 participants. The presence of the factor V Leiden variant was determined by PCR and Mnl I digestion. The presence of the factor V Leiden variant was neither associated with the number of pregnancies nor with the number of children per women. Data from 1,768 females who had at least one pregnancy with known outcome was available for the present analysis. Seventy-three women (4.1%) reported at least one stillbirth. Women with and without the factor V Leiden mutation did not differ with respect to the number of women with at least one stillbirth (OR for factor V Leiden variant 1.57; 95%-CI 0.76 – 3.25). Furthermore, the number of women with two or more stillbirths, the number of stillbirths per affected woman and the number of stillbirths per number of pregnancies per woman was similar between both genotype groups. In conclusion, there is no association between the factor V Leiden mutation and the risk of stillbirth in a representative population sample.
Comparacao de desempenho na indexacao de big geospatial Data em ambiente de nuvem computacional

With the growth of spatial data volume, known as Big Geospatial Data, some tools have been developed to allow the processing of this data in an efficient way, but for this it is fundamental to index the databases. The cloud computing has computational power and several other characteristics that are adherent to the execution of this type of application. This paper presents an analysis of indexing, operations and queries performed through SpatialHadoop in a test scenario provisioned in the cloud environment. Resumo. Com crescimento do volume de dados espaciais, conceituado como Big Geospatial Data, algumas ferramentas foram desenvolvidas para permitir o processamento desses dados de forma eficiente, mas para isso é fundamental a indexação das bases de dados. A computação em nuvem possui poder computacional e diversas outras características que são aderentes para a execução deste tipo de aplicação. Este trabalho apresenta uma análise de indexações, operações e consultas realizadas através da ferramenta SpatialHadoop em um cenário de testes provisionado em ambiente de nuvem.
The Application of Altman's Z-Score Model in Predicting Bankruptcy: Evidence from the Trading Sector in Sri Lanka

Prediction of bankruptcy is crucial as the early warning may change entire complications and may avoid the high cost that is associated with distress. The main purpose of this study is to examine the likelihood of bankruptcy of the firms belonging to the Trading Sector in Sri Lanka. The research used data from the financial reports of seven trading companies for a period of the last five years from 2010 to 2014. Altman’s original (1968) bankruptcy model has been applied in order to classify the companies in various levels of financial position namely safe, grey and distress. Findings reveal that 71% of the companies belonging to the Trading Sector were in financial distress and the rest of whole 29% were in the grey zone. The fact that none of the companies lie under the safe zone highlights that as a whole the sector is in a menace.
Comparative Allometry and Sexual Behavior of Four Fruit Fly Species in the Tribe Ceratitidini (Diptera: Tephritidae)

Abstract Sexual dimorphisms in four related species of tephritid flies were shown to be associated with differences in sexual behavior. In two species, Ceratitis capitata and C. catoirii, males and females approach closely head to head and apparently touch aristae, and the male buzzes his wings, probably fanning pheromone toward the female; the males were found to have longer aristae with fewer microsetae, and larger posterior areas of their wings than do females. These dimorphisms were absent in the other two species, C. rosa and Neoceratitis cyanescens, which court at a longer distance and in which the male does not fan pheromone toward the female prior to mounting. All three pairs of legs were proportionally longer in the males of all four species. None of the other sexually dimorphic male signalling traits showed the positive allometric slopes predicted by some theories.
Maximum likelihood ranking in racing sports

Most ranking methods used in racing sports are based on the number of points earned in a series of races. In some applications, this method will fail to provide an accurate ranking of competitors based on ability. In particular, rankings will not accurately reflect ability when competitors enter different numbers of races or when the level of competition varies by race. Additionally, point-based rankings are dependent on a subjective points scale. Three alternative models of performance and corresponding maximum likelihood estimation methods are presented that can be used to rank competitors and overcome the shortcomings of point-based rankings. Two methods are based on paired-comparisons among competitors and can be estimated using common binary-choice regression methods; the other is based on the rank-ordered logit model. These methods are valuable tools for stakeholders who need to evaluate the relative abilities of competitors to efficiently allocate resources. Application is demonstrated using results from the 2012 Formula One season, and the results of the maximum likelihood methods are compared to each other and the official point-based rankings.
Association Between Hospital Volume and 30-Day Readmissions Following Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement

Importance With the approval of transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) for patients with severe symptomatic aortic stenosis at intermediate surgical risk, TAVR volume is projected to increase exponentially in the United States. The 30-day readmission rate for TAVR was recently reported at 17.9%. The association between institutional TAVR volume and the 30-day readmission metric has not been examined. Objective To assess the association between hospital TAVR volume and 30-day readmission. Design, Setting, and Participants In this observational study, we used the 2014 Nationwide Readmissions Database to identify hospitals with established TAVR programs (performing at least 5 TAVRs in the first quarter of 2014). Based on annual TAVR volume, hospitals were classified as low (<50), medium (≥50 to <100), and high (≥100) volume. Rates, causes, and costs of 30-day readmissions were compared between low-, medium-, and high-volume hospitals. Data were analyzed from November to December 2016. Exposure Transcatheter aortic valve replacement. Main Outcomes and Measures Thirty-day readmissions. Results Of 129 hospitals included in this study, 20 (15.5%) were categorized as low volume, 47 (36.4%) as medium volume, and 62 (48.1%) as high volume. Of 16 252 index TAVR procedures, 663 (4.1%), 3067 (18.9%), and 12 522 (77.0%) were performed at low-, medium-, and high-volume hospitals, respectively. Thirty-day readmission rates were significantly lower in high-volume compared with medium-volume (adjusted odds ratio, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.68-0.85; P < .001) and low-volume (adjusted odds ratio, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.60-0.92; P = .007) hospitals. Noncardiac readmissions were more common in low-volume hospitals (65.6% vs 60.6% in high-volume hospitals), whereas cardiac readmissions were more common in high-volume hospitals (39.4% vs 34.4% in low-volume hospitals). There were no significant differences in length of stay and costs per readmission among the 3 groups (mean [SD], 5.5 [5.0] days vs 5.9 [7.5] days vs 6.0 [5.8] days; P = .74, and $13 886 [18 333] vs $14 135 [17 939] vs $13 432 [15 725]; P = .63, respectively). Conclusions and Relevance We report for the first time, to our knowledge, an inverse association between hospital TAVR volume and 30-day readmissions. Lower readmission at higher-volume hospitals was associated with significantly lower cost to the health care system.
Energy Futures Prices and the US Dollar Exchange Rate

This paper evaluates the relationship among the NYMEX futures prices for crude oil, unleaded gasoline, heating oil and the US trade‐weighted exchange rate. The motivation is to update and extend the literature in an attempt to determine the relationship between the US exchange rate and energy prices. In addition, the causal relationships among the energy futures prices are examined. Cointegration is detected among the variables, but contrary to the existing empirical literature, it is found that the US exchange rate can be excluded from the cointegrating space. The Granger causality tests and impulse response functions also indicate that the US exchange rate is not related to the energy prices. The recursive cointegration analysis reveals that the relationship between the US exchange rate and the energy futures prices has faded across time.
Sources of Capital for Small Family-Owned Businesses

Securing adequate capital is an ongoing challenge for many small family-owned businesses. This article uses data from the 1993 National Survey of Small Business Finances to determine the extent to which small family-owned firms use various types of credit products. Using logistic regression, it also identifies variables that predict the likelihood of using credit. Findings reveal that size, age, and profitability of the firm were the most important predictors. Results also indicate that there were virtually no differences between family-owned and nonfamily-owned businesses in the usage of various credit products.
Role of poverty in fuel choice and exposure to indoor air pollution in Pakistan

Indoor air pollution, due to household solid fuel use, is responsible for a significant burden of disease in developing countries. Fuel choice is often associated with household income. However, many other socio-economic and environmental factors also influence the choice of fuel and the resultant indoor air pollution exposure. The aim of this paper is to assess the role of poverty on indoor air pollution in Pakistan through fuel choice. Furthermore, a multinomial logit model has been used to predict the determinants of fuel choice. The results indicate that although poverty makes a significant contribution, other factors such as household location and area, household size, low level of human capital, asset ownership structure and access to basic utilities are the important correlates of fuel choice. Knowledge relating to the proximate determinants for fuel choice is crucial to inform policy and can play a pivotal role in designing sustainable intervention strategies to reduce the risk of exposure to indoor air pollution in Pakistan.
Treatment of severe pregnancy‐associated hypertension with the calcium antagonist nifedipine

The calcium antagonist, nifedipine, was given orally to 21 women with acute episodes of severe hypertension during pregnancy or in the puerperium. A rapid and significant fall in blood pressure by an average of 26/20 mmHg was seen at 20 min after administration. The hypotensive effect was not significantly enhanced in those women already taking medication to lower the blood pressure. The principal side effects were headache and cutaneous flushing. No adverse fetal effects were detected. This is the first study of the use of this drug to control hypertension in pregnancy. The aarent efficacy of nifedipine justifies its further investigation in controlled trials.
Crowd-Sourced Mobility Mapping for Location Tracking Using Unlabeled Wi-Fi Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

Due to the increasing requirements of the seamless and round-the-clock Location-based services (LBSs), a growing interest in Wi-Fi network aided location tracking is witnessed in the past decade. One of the significant problems of the conventional Wi-Fi location tracking approaches based on received signal strength (RSS) fingerprinting is the time-consuming and labor intensive work involved in location fingerprint calibration. To solve this problem, a novel unlabeled Wi-Fi simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) approach is developed to avoid the location fingerprinting and additional inertial or vision sensors. In this approach, an unlabeled mobility map of the coverage area is first constructed by using the crowd-sourcing from a batch of sporadically recorded Wi-Fi RSS sequences based on the spectral cluster assembling. Then, the sequence alignment algorithm is applied to conduct location tracking and mobility map updating. Finally, the effectiveness of this approach is verified by the extensive experiments carried out in a campus-wide area.
Walking and cycling to health: a comparative analysis of city, state, and international data.

OBJECTIVES We sought to determine the magnitude, direction, and statistical significance of the relationship between active travel and rates of physical activity, obesity, and diabetes. METHODS We examined aggregate cross-sectional health and travel data for 14 countries, all 50 US states, and 47 of the 50 largest US cities through graphical, correlation, and bivariate regression analysis on the country, state, and city levels. RESULTS At all 3 geographic levels, we found statistically significant negative relationships between active travel and self-reported obesity. At the state and city levels, we found statistically significant positive relationships between active travel and physical activity and statistically significant negative relationships between active travel and diabetes. CONCLUSIONS Together with many other studies, our analysis provides evidence of the population-level health benefits of active travel. Policies on transport, land-use, and urban development should be designed to encourage walking and cycling for daily travel.
Clinical Study of Acute Low-Tone Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Survey and Analysis of Glycerol Test and Orthostatic Test

Fifty patients (14 men and 36 women ranging in age from 16 to 66 years) with acute low-tone sensorineural hearing loss (ALHL) were retrospectively analyzed in this study. The glycerol test and the orthostatic test were performed. On the glycerol test, 43.8% of 16 ears of the 14 men and 33.3% of 39 ears of the 36 women with ALHL had a positive result. On the orthostatic test, 42.9% of the 14 men and 52.7% of the 36 women with ALHL had a positive result. In addition, 28.6% of the 14 men and 33.3% of the 36 women had hypotension with a systolic blood pressure of 100 mm Hg or less. Our results suggest that endolymphatic hydrops as shown by the glycerol test and an underlying autonomic imbalance and/or insufficient blood circulation as shown by the orthostatic test may be important factors in the causation of ALHL.
Public Management Mentoring

Despite the abundance of literature discussing the individual and organizational outcomes of mentoring, this general literature remains virtually silent on the role of mentoring in the public sector. The authors review and critique the mentoring literature, indicating its limitations for understanding mentoring in a public management context. In particular, the authors highlight the interdependence of organizations, the opportunity structures of the public sector, and public service motivation that mediate the outcomes of mentoring in the public sector. The authors then present a three-tier model that focuses on public management mentoring outcomes. The three-tier model marries the unique context of public sector work to the extensive mentoring literature and lays the groundwork for a theory of public management mentoring. The authors employ the model to generate propositions about public management mentoring outcomes. These propositions should prove useful for theory development but also for application in public sector mentoring relationships and programs.
Inefficiencies in Bargaining: Departing from Akerlof and Myerson-Satterthwaite

We consider bargaining problems in which parties have access to outside options. The size of the pie is commonly known and each party privately knows the realization of her outside option. Parties are assumed to have a veto right, which allows them to obtain at least their outside option payoff in any event. Besides, agents can receive no subsidy ex post. We show that inefficiencies are inevitable for virtually all distributions of outside options, as long as the size of the surplus generated by the agreement is uncertain and may be arbitrarily small for all realizations of either party’s outside option. Our inefficiency result holds true whatever the degree of correlation between the distributions of outside options, and even if it is known for sure that an agreement is beneficial. The same insights apply to the bargaining between a buyer and a seller privately informed of their valuations and to public good problems among agents privately informed of their willingness to pay.
Pittsburgh Compound B-Negative Dementia—A Possibility of Misdiagnosis of Patients With Non-Alzheimer Disease-Type Dementia as Having AD

Amyloid imaging has been used to detect amyloid deposition in the brain. We performed Pittsburgh compound B (PiB)-positron emission tomography on 63 patients with dementia having cognitive decline or memory disturbance. In addition, we measured the patients' apolipoprotein E4 (apo E4) status and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of amyloid-β (Aβ)1-42, tau, and P-tau. Finally, the patients were diagnosed as having probable Alzheimer disease (AD) on the basis of their neuropsychological findings and because they met the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke and the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association criteria. Among the patients diagnosed with probable AD, 10 patients were PiB negative. The CSF levels of P-tau and tau in PiB-negative patients were significantly lower than those in the PiB-positive patients. In addition, the CSF levels of Aβ1-42 in the PiB-negative patients were significantly higher than those in the PiB-positive patients. None of the PiB-negative patients were apo E4 carriers. These results suggest that the PiB-negative patient group included not only AD patients but also non-AD-type dementia patients. However, our finding is based on a relatively small number of patients and therefore should be replicated in a larger cohort. In addition, it will be necessary to categorize these participants by longitudinal follow-up and postmortem pathological examinations.
Emerging from crisis with new approaches to science of society

The recurrence of economic crises serves to illustrate the limits of neoclassical economics and the contemporary established models. Modern-day economic developments are highly influenced by the theory of complexity. In terms of thermodynamics, the inputs of the process consists in economically valuable natural resources and the outputs are worthless wastes; the matter-energy is absorbed in the economic process in a low entropy state which in turn is eliminated in a state of high entropy. Consequently, an updated methodology is required as all activities and overall economic processes demonstrate the inevitably entropic processes. Complex systems research represents the viable alternative for sustainable growth in the following decades. The concept of emergence represents an insightful argument against the well-planned and ordered nature of the social sciences universe. The study of complex systems, evolutionary economics and interdisciplinary research offers the possibility of new developments.
Postcards as representation of a destination image: The case of Berlin

The study adopted a qualitative approach to assess the role of postcards in representing a destination image. Twenty-five postcard racks were sampled in a variety of retail outlets in Berlin, using an observation and photography of the postcards. The 150 postcards sampled were analyzed and sorted according to the pictorial content and other iconic symbols featured on the postcards using certain photographic typologies employed in previous research. The findings revealed that unlike many other large metropolitan cities, Berlin was distinctively represented in its postcards. The analysis concluded that the postcards lacked human portrayal and featured a limited sample of its cultural and heritage attractions. Instead, the majority of the postcards featured Cold War themes, as well as generic icons and legendary mascots of the city. The lack of a focus representation of contemporary Berlin in tourists’ postcards may be explained by Berlin’s historical, economic, political, and social background. Recommendations for developing more pertinent images of the tourist experiences to be featured on postcards are discussed.
Exchange Rate Volatility and Cointegration in Tourism Demand

This study investigates the long-run demand for Australian outbound leisure tourism during the period 1983 (quarter 1) to 1997 (quarter 4) for nine major tourism destinations. The study is unique in an international context by using exchange rate volatility as an explanatory variable, while it is unique in an Australian context by using a composite substitute price variable. The estimation and hypothesis-testing processes are undertaken using both the Johansen and Engle and Granger procedures. The variance of the exchange rate was found to be a significant determinant of long-run tourism demand in 50% of estimates. Real disposable income and substitute prices were found to have inelastic long-run effects on tourism, while the long-run relative price elasticity tended to differ widely across countries. Indonesia was the only country to find that the exchange rate has a significantly different impact on tourism than relative prices.