Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The potential of local food systems in North America: A review of foodshed analyses

Abstract Foodshed analysis provides a way to assess the capacity of regions to feed themselves. While dozens of foodshed analyses have been completed across North America, they have not been systematically analyzed. This paper reviews 22 foodshed analyses completed in the USA and Canada between 2000 and 2013. The criteria used to evaluate the foodshed studies are authorship/type of publication, spatial extent, goals and questions, methods and data sources for assessing consumption and production, analysis of pathways from production to consumption and findings. Similarities and differences, along with strengths and weaknesses, are identified. Together, the foodshed studies indicate significant opportunity for food system relocalization across North America. Foodshed studies are a potentially powerful tool for policy analysis and planning. A future research agenda for foodshed studies is identified, including addressing data gaps and establishing more standardized models for evaluating production, consumption and pathways.
Estimating a Payment Vehicle for Financing Nourishment of Residential Beaches using a Spatial-Lag Hedonic Property Price Model

Beach nourishment projects are common methods for coastal states to protect beaches and property from the natural erosive process. However, while the beneficiaries of beach nourishment tend to be local property owners and recreators, projects are typically funded at the state level. Based on the benefit principle, as local residents receive more of the erosion protection benefits of the nourishment projects, we estimate a value capture tax, designed to levy the financing burden in a manner that approximates the distribution of benefits. The benefits of nourishment projects to coastal property owners are estimated using the results from a spatial-lag hedonic model that controls for viewshed effects.
Impact of B-Scan Averaging on Spectralis Optical Coherence Tomography Image Quality before and after Cataract Surgery

Background and Objective To determine optimal image averaging settings for Spectralis optical coherence tomography (OCT) in patients with and without cataract. Study Design/Material and Methods In a prospective study, the eyes were imaged before and after cataract surgery using seven different image averaging settings. Image quality was quantitatively evaluated using signal-to-noise ratio, distinction between retinal layer image intensity distributions, and retinal layer segmentation performance. Measures were compared pre- and postoperatively across different degrees of averaging. Results 13 eyes of 13 patients were included and 1092 layer boundaries analyzed. Preoperatively, increasing image averaging led to a logarithmic growth in all image quality measures up to 96 frames. Postoperatively, increasing averaging beyond 16 images resulted in a plateau without further benefits to image quality. Averaging 16 frames postoperatively provided comparable image quality to 96 frames preoperatively. Conclusion In patients with clear media, averaging 16 images provided optimal signal quality. A further increase in averaging was only beneficial in the eyes with senile cataract. However, prolonged acquisition time and possible loss of details have to be taken into account.
A Comparison of Generic Skills and Emotional Intelligence in Accounting Education

Embedding generic skills such as communication and teamwork in the accounting curriculum continues to attract attention from stakeholders. In parallel, the business world and more recently some faculty, have recognized and explored the need to incorporate emotional intelligence (EI) in the curriculum. EI is viewed as a desirable quality as it allows accountants to excel in strategic decision making, teamwork, leadership, and client relations. We contend that in the quest to find the best employees, employers have focused on EI, whereas accounting faculty have placed less emphasis on EI skill development and a greater emphasis on generic skills. This paper addresses the need for accountants to have a combination of EI and generic skills. The commonalities and differences between an EI framework and a generic skills framework are identified when the two are juxtaposed. This provides guidance for faculty seeking to develop highly skilled graduates via the development of a range of curriculum resources designed to enhance EI.
How Income Segmentation Affects Income Mobility: Evidence from Panel Data in the Philippines

Despite vibrant economic growth, the Philippines confronts persistently high income inequality. Using household-level panel data collected for the years 2003, 2006 and 2009, we investigate how income segmentation affects Filipinos' income mobility prospects. The results of the multinomial logistic models suggest that if households are grouped according to initial income (in 2003), richer households had the lowest propensity to experience slow to moderate income changes and were most likely to experience consistently downward mobility from 2003 to 2009, while initially poorer households had the highest propensity to experience consistently upward mobility. On the other hand, if households are grouped according to permanent income, we still find that lower income households experienced (slightly) better income mobility outcomes; however, their edge over higher income households was much smaller than when initial income was used. This result could indicate that convergence on the basis of initial income may be in part random variation. The findings are robust to heuristic and model-based methods of grouping households into different income segments.
The Study of Pro-poor Growth and Poverty Reduction in Pakistan (1999–2006)

The aim of this study is to examine different approaches to measuring pro-poor growth rate in the context of Pakistan’s sub-sectors, that is, agriculture, manufacturing, commodity producing and services sectors. This research is extended within the phenomenon of Pro-Poor Growth Index (PPGI) and Poverty Equivalent Growth Rates (PEGR) which is anticipated by Kakwani and Pernia (2000) and Kakwani and Son (2004) in the literature. The present article examines as to what extent the poor have benefited from growth while taking into account the magnitude of growth and the benefits of growth achieved by the poor between 1999 and 2006. The research concludes that growth is classified anti-poor in the overall Pakistan’s sub-sectors due to pro-rich federal policies.
Kindling Points of Light: Volunteering as Public Policy

Over the past thirty years, government and voluntary-sector initia tives have stimulated both expansion of the number of volunteers and greater participation by young people, the elderly, and non- whites. Despite the high priority given to volunteering by the Reagan administration, federally sponsored programs did not expand, the proportion of Americans engaged in volunteering declined, and more volunteers shifted into organizations affected by reductions in human services. The idea that reducing services would motivate people to volunteer was based on invalid assumptions about the ideology of volunteers and the factors that motivate people to work for free. A synergistic rather than a competitive relationship might exist between the public and the voluntary sectors.
Effect of sleep disorders on threatened premature delivery

Abstract Aim: The present observational study aimed to clarify the effects of sleep disorders on threatened premature delivery, especially preterm uterine contraction. Methods: The participants included 122 healthy singleton pregnant women. The Pittsburgh sleep quality index was used to evaluate the quality of sleep during the previous month at the initial examination and at 16, 24, and 32 weeks of gestation; scores >5 indicate poor sleep. Threatened premature delivery was defined as preterm uterine contraction >6 times/h and requiring tocolytic therapy before 37 weeks of gestation. We analyzed the relationship between poor sleep and threatened premature delivery. Results: Poor sleep affected 27% (n=33) at the initial examination, 34% (n=41) at 16 weeks, 37% (n=45) at 24 weeks, and 41% (n=50) at 32 weeks of gestation. There were 23 patients (19%) with threatened premature delivery. Poor sleep affected 35% and 25% of patients with threatened and non-threatened premature delivery at the initial examination, respectively, 52% and 29% at 16 weeks, 48% and 34% at 24 weeks, and 43% and 40% at 32 weeks of gestation. Conclusions: Sleep disorders at 16 weeks of gestation were the most significantly associated with threatened premature delivery.
Dose-response study of the redistribution of intravascular volume by angiotensin II in man.

1. The response of systemic and regional haemodynamic indices to increasing infusion rates of angiotensin II (1, 3 or 10 ng min-1 kg-1) or placebo [5% (w/v) D-glucose] was studied in eight normal male subjects. 2. As compared with placebo, angiotensin II infusion caused an incremental rise in the serum angiotensin II level [14.5 +/- 7.7 (placebo) to 187.2 +/- 36.1 (10 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1) pmol/l; mean +/- 95% confidence interval] associated with a stepwise increase in total peripheral resistance [880 +/- 42 (placebo) to 1284 +/- 58 (10 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1) dyn s cm-5] and a progressive reduction in cardiac output [8.3 +/- 0.4 (placebo) to 7.0 +/- 0.4 (10 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1) litres/min]. 3. A stepwise fall in renal blood flow was observed with increasing angiotensin II infusion rate [1302 +/- 65 (placebo) to 913 +/- 64 (10 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1) ml/min]. In contrast, calf blood flow was unaffected by 1 ng or 3 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1 and was significantly increased by 10 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1 (P less than 0.01). 4. Calf venous capacitance was uninfluenced by 1 ng of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1, but was significantly increased by both 3 ng (P less than 0.005) and 10 ng (P less than 0.001) of angiotensin II min-1 kg-1. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
The Origins and Diffusion of Racial Restrictive Covenants

Racial restrictive covenants-private agreements barring nonCaucasians from occupying or owning property-were a key element of the segregationist policies in the early twentieth-century United States. Yet though we know a great deal about racial restrictive covenants at the moment of their demise in the 1940s,' we know relatively little about their origins or spread. The practice disseminated rapidly among the states, yet the mechanisms of its diffusion are unclear. Why did restrictive covenants nationalize rapidly in the early 1920s? Why were they successfully implemented while other alternatives in race relations failed to materialize? What were the avenues for their diffusion? Much of the existing literature on policy diffusion,2 stemming from Jack 1
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory therapy after eccentric exercise in healthy older individuals.

BACKGROUND Aging is associated with greater susceptibility to muscle injury and soreness after exercise. Although elderly persons regularly consume nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), it is not clear that NSAIDs alleviate muscle dysfunction and/or inflammation following injurious exercise. METHODS In this double-blind crossover study, 10 men and 5 women (aged 60 +/- 2 years, mean +/- SE) consumed naproxen sodium or placebo for 10 days after performing 64 unilateral eccentric (ECC) knee extensions using 75% of the ECC 1-repetition maximum. Strength was measured before, 3 days after, and 10 days after each bout. Injury and soreness were assessed using magnetic resonance images of m. quadriceps femoris (QF) and a visual analog scale. RESULTS Three days after exercise, concentric strength loss was greater for placebo (-32 +/- 9%) than NSAID (-6 +/- 8%; p =.0064). Likewise, isometric strength declined less for NSAID than placebo (-12 +/- 7% vs -24 +/- 4%; p =.0213), and thigh soreness while rising from a chair was greater for placebo (p < or =.0393) than NSAID (43 +/- 7 mm vs 26 +/- 7 mm). QF cross-sectional area (cm(2)) showing elevated T(2) was 27% and 35% greater (p < or =.0096) for placebo on Days 3 and 10, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Naproxen sodium attenuated muscle injury, strength loss, and soreness following ECC exercise in older individuals and may be beneficial during the early stages of increased physical activity.
Curiosity and cure: Translational research strategies for neural repair‐mediated rehabilitation

Clinicians who seek interventions for neural repair in patients with paralysis and other impairments may extrapolate the results of cell culture and rodent experiments into the framework of a preclinical study. These experiments, however, must be interpreted within the context of the model and the highly constrained hypothesis and manipulation being tested. Rodent models of repair for stroke and spinal cord injury offer examples of potential pitfalls in the interpretation of results from developmental gene activation, transgenic mice, endogeneous neurogenesis, cellular transplantation, axon regeneration and remyelination, dendritic proliferation, activity‐dependent adaptations, skills learning, and behavioral testing. Preclinical experiments that inform the design of human trials ideally include a lesion of etiology, volume and location that reflects the human disease; examine changes induced by injury and by repair procedures both near and remote from the lesion; distinguish between reactive molecular and histologic changes versus changes critical to repair cascades; employ explicit training paradigms for the reacquisition of testable skills; correlate morphologic and physiologic measures of repair with behavioral measures of task reacquisition; reproduce key results in more than one laboratory, in different strains or species of rodent, and in a larger mammal; and generalize the results across several disease models, such as axonal regeneration in a stroke and spinal cord injury platform. Collaborations between basic and clinical scientists in the development of translational animal models of injury and repair can propel experiments for ethical bench‐to‐bedside therapies to augment the rehabilitation of disabled patients. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Develop Neurobiol, 2007
Prolonged impairment of hematopoiesis after high-dose therapy followed by autologous bone marrow transplantation.

Hematopoietic reconstitution has been studied in 180 patients after autologous bone marrow transplantation based on peripheral blood cell (PBC) recovery time and marrow progenitor counts sequentially tested for up to 4 years. Several factors that could influence hematopoietic reconstitution have been analyzed including sex, age, diagnosis, disease status, conditioning regimen, graft progenitor content, graft in vitro purging, and postgrafting administration of growth factors. Before transplantation, marrow progenitor values were normal only for colony-forming unit granulocyte macrophage (CFU-GM) in contrast to colony-forming unit-erythroid (CFU-E), burst-forming unit-erythroid (BFU-E), and colony-forming unit-megakaryocyte (CFU-Meg). After transplantation, as described with allogenic grafts, these values remained low for several years, although PBC counts were nearly normalized within a few weeks. Pregraft values were reached after 2 years for CFU-GM and BFU-E, and after 4 years for CFU-E, while CFU-Meg failed to reach pregraft values after this time. Normal levels were reached after 4 years only by CFU-GM. On univariate and multivariate analysis, the following factors appeared to delay both PBC and marrow progenitor reconstitution: underlying disease (particularly acute myeloid leukemias), graft characteristics such as low stem cell content and in vitro purging, conditioning regimens with total body irradiation or busulfan, and lack of postgraft administration of growth factors. In conclusion, high-dose therapy followed by bone marrow transplantation induces a deep and prolonged impairment of hematopoiesis irrespective of any alloimmune reaction or postgraft immunosuppressive therapy. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Online Travel Products Shopping: Differences between Shoppers and Nonshoppers

This article was conducted to clarify differences between online travel product shoppers and nonshoppers using the Engel, Black, and Miniard (EBM) consumer decision process model as the theoretical framework. Using 6 store characteristics and 10 personal characteristics, findings suggested that shoppers and nonshoppers were similar in how they viewed differences between Internet shopping and shopping at traditional stores (store characteristics). However, shoppers and nonshoppers differed on personal characteristics. Findings provided evidence for the usefulness of the EBM model when determining personal characteristic differences between shoppers and nonshoppers but not for store characteristics.
Gérer l'instabilité des prix alimentaires

Depuis la fin des annees 1980, une doctrine s’est imposee concernant la maniere de gerer l’instabilite des prix alimentaires. Son message principal est qu’il est preferable de traiter les effets de l’instabilite des prix sans empecher les prix de fluctuer. Elle repose principalement sur les instruments de couverture du risque-prix completes, s’agissant des prix alimentaires dans les PED, par des instruments publics de gestion des crises (aide d’urgence). L’objectif de l’article est de discuter la pertinence de cette doctrine, en distinguant les cas des marches domestiques des PED, des marches domestiques des pays developpes et des marches internationaux.
Is Cardiovascular or Resistance Exercise Better to Treat Patients With Depression? A Narrative Review

Objectives: There is growing evidence regarding the efficacy of exercise as a treatment strategy for patients with depression. This paper summarises the benefits of both cardiovascular and resistance exercise for patients with depression. Design: A narrative review design was employed. Supporting literature for the individual and combined benefits of both modalities are presented. Studies comparing both modalities are then discussed. Results: The outcomes of the review indicate that there is evidence for the efficacy of both cardiovascular exercise and resistance exercise, either independently or combined, in the treatment of depression across the range of severity levels and age groups. Conclusion: Exercise interventions for the treatment of depression appear worthwhile and well tolerated. Exercise preference, access to resources and social support may shape the choice for the patient. The role of primary and allied health professionals in guiding this choice is discussed. Implications for clinical practice and further research are presented.
Size and Book-to-Market Factors in Earnings and Returns

The authors study whether the behavior of stock prices, in relation to size and book-to-market equity (BE/ME), reflects the behavior of earnings. Consistent with rational pricing, high BE/ME signals persistent poor earnings and low BE/ME signals strong earnings. Moreover, stock prices forecast the reversion of earnings growth observed after firms are ranked on size and BE/ME. Finally, there are market, size, and BE/ME factors in earnings like those in returns. The market and size factors in earnings help explain those in returns but the authors find no link between BE/ME factors in earnings and returns. Copyright 1995 by American Finance Association.
When Do Sell-Side Analyst Reports Really Matter? Shareholder Protection, Institutional Investors and the Informativeness of Equity Research

We examine whether the informativeness of sell-side analyst reports depends on the strength of the regulatory environment of a country and the regulatory background of the institutional investors of a company. Our analyses are based on more than 600,000 analyst reports from 2005 through 2010 from eight leading capital markets (the U.S., the EU5, Switzerland and Japan). Based on both measures that we use to proxy the informativeness of analyst research (i.e., short-term market reaction and forecast errors with respect to corporate earnings and target prices), our results show that the information value of research increases as the level of investor protection increases. This result is robust to different specifications of investor protection. We further demonstrate that analyst forecasts are more (less) valuable when the majority of institutional investors are from strong (weak) investor protection countries.
The Impact of Eliminating the 20-F Reconciliation Requirement for IFRS Filers on Earnings Persistence and Information Uncertainty

SYNOPSIS: On November 15, 2007, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eliminated the requirement that foreign private issuers reporting under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) include a reconciliation to U.S. GAAP in their 20-F filing. To the extent that the reconciliations had information content, it is possible that the information environment of IFRS filers deteriorated in the post-reconciliation period, unless they voluntarily improved disclosure quality. Using difference-in-differences tests, we examine whether there was any change in the persistence of earnings and analyst forecast dispersion after the new regulation. We find that earnings persistence increased (did not increase) and analyst uncertainty measured by the forecast dispersion did not increase (increased) for firms domiciled in weaker (stronger) investor protection countries. These results suggest that firms from a weaker investor protection environment had a greater incentive to “signal” the quality by volun.
Labor Force Participation Rate and Economic Growth: Observations for Turkey

Although some discussions about the relation between population and the economic growth are made for a long time, today there is a general opinion that the population growth has positive relation with the economic growth. This opinion is also supported by the empirical studies. Despite there is a growth directly advancing with the population growth, the advancing of the population in the opposite direction with the rate of the labor force participation is thought to be a paradox. This paradox reveals some concepts, namely, "jobless growth" and " unskilled growth". In this study, an explanation is sought about the remaining or less increasing of the rate of the labor force participation although a linear relation between the GDP and the population and the labor. The official statements refer that this paradox is related with the lack of female participation in the labor force and employment in the agricultural sector to be falling. This study tries to point that this quantity cannot create a quality although the growth is quantitative.