Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of Breakeven Farm-gate Switchgrass Prices in South Central North Dakota-Summary

Switchgrass, a warm-season perennial grass, native to the region, has received considerable interest for its potential role as a dedicated feedstock for cellulosic-based bio-fuels. This research examined the farm-gate price needed for switchgrass to provide per-acre net returns equal to those obtained from traditional crops in south central North Dakota. Future production costs for switchgrass and net returns from traditional crops were estimated for three soil productivity classes and also were developed to reflect the historical revenue and cost patterns associated with producers who are typically more or less profitable (i.e., average net return per acre) than regional averages. Prices were calculated using an annualized equivalent analysis of switchgrass production costs and net returns from traditional crops from 2008 through 2017. Switchgrass production costs ranged from just over $40 per ton on marginal soils to $34.80 per ton on highly productive soils. Breakeven switchgrass prices across the three soil productivity classes ranged from $47 per ton in the low productivity soils to $76 per ton in the most productive soils. Production costs for low-profit producers were estimated at $47 per ton, compared to the regional average of $37.50 per ton. Switchgrass production costs for the remaining profitability groups ranged from about $33.50 per ton to about $36.75 per ton. The breakeven farm-gate price for switchgrass ranged from $56 per ton for the two lowest profitability groups to over $94 per ton for the most profitable producers. A key economic criterion influencing the breakeven price for switchgrass will be the foregone net revenue from displaced traditional crops. On marginal soils, just under one-third of the breakeven price was derived from the level of foregone net returns from traditional crops; whereas, over 80 percent of the breakeven price was derived from the level of foregone net returns from traditional crops on the most productive soils. As net returns from traditional crops decreased, the more that breakeven switchgrass prices approached production costs for switchgrass. Under current conditions of high input costs, escalating transportation costs, and given the increases in net returns from traditional crops, switchgrass, as a feedstock to a cellulosic ethanol plant, will be more expensive than previously estimated.
Variability in brain death determination practices in children.

OBJECTIVE To investigate variability in practices for determining brain death and organ procurement results in pediatric intensive care units (PICUs). DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Pediatric ICUs. PATIENTS Children undergoing brain death evaluations selected from 5415 consecutive PICU admissions. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Data from children undergoing brain death evaluations including number of coma examinations, number and duration of apnea tests, PCO2 measurements at the end of the apnea test, ancillary tests used to confirm brain death, organ procurement, and reasons for nonprocurement. RESULTS A total of 93 (37%) of 248 deaths were brain deaths. Compared with the other deaths, children who were classified as brain dead were sicker on admission (mean Pediatric Risk of Mortality [PRISM] score +/- SD: 31 +/- 11 vs 23 +/- 12, P < .001; pre-ICU cardiopulmonary resuscitation: 72% vs 40%, P < .001), and had more traumatic injuries (42% vs 12%, P < .001). Variability in apnea testing included lack of apnea testing in 23 patients (25%) and controversial apnea testing practices in 20 patients (22%). Three patients (3%) had brain death evaluations within hours of discontinuing barbiturate infusions, and four of 30 patients younger than 1 year did not have a confirmatory test. Solid organ procurement was successful in 32%. Reasons for nonprocurement included parental refusal (12%), disease state (12%), and medical examiner's case (22%). CONCLUSIONS Substantial variability exists in the criteria used by clinicians for the diagnosis of brain death. Some practices are contradictory to the Guidelines for the Determination of Brain Death in Children and to recommendations for apnea testing. Organ procurement could be improved by increased medical examiner cooperation.
Destination Image Saturation

ABSTRACT Offering travel information sources to potential tourists can be expensive, although the importance of the amount and variety of travel information sources has been stressed in many studies. Therefore, it would be useful to examine how much exposure to travel information would lead to optimal results. Effects of exposure time to travel information on destination image were examined in this study. Two hypotheses were suggested to account for the relationships between exposure time to travel information and destination image. Specifically, the first hypothesis was related to a linear trend, while the second one was related to a quadratic trend in the conceptual relationships. A posttest-only control group design was used, and 312 undergraduate students were recruited at six colleges. Multivariate analysis of variance and a series of quadratic regression analyses were used to test the two hypotheses. Results demonstrated that there were both linear and quadratic trends in the relationships between exposure time to travel information and destination image. Findings also provided empirical evidence for a saturation effect on perceived destination image formation. Therefore, an optimum level between information exposure and perceptions was suggested.
Circumnavigation with a difference? music, representation and the disney experience: It's a small, small world

In the Fantasyland section of the Disneyland Paris theme park is a ride called It's a Small World. Hop aboard the boat and you'll be taken on a leisurely voyage around the world and treated to an aural and visual spectacle of global harmony. Dolls representing people from different countries are dressed in local costume, perform local dances and play local instruments. But the music which accompanies the ride is firmly rooted in Euro-America. This article explores the relationships of power embedded within the Small World ride and addresses a number of questions relating to the politics of cultural representation and specifically to the role of music in the ride: to what extent does the apparent vision of global harmony in Small World (“we all sing the same song”) mask the realities of exploitation and domination (“you all sing my song”) in the activities of global corporations such as Disney? And what role does the music play in normalizing a highly political agenda?
REPORT : USE OF THE POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION TO DETECT PARACOCCIDIOIDES BRASILIENSIS IN MURINE PARACOCCIDIOIDOMYCOSIS

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to detect the presence of Paracoccidioides brasiliensis in a murine model of disseminated paracoccidioidomycosis. Using a previously identified P. brasiliensis-specific DNA sequence, P. brasiliensis DNA was detected in serum of five experimentally infected mice. The PCR method was able to detect as little as 10 pg of P. brasiliensis DNA in serum, and it was more sensitive than blood culture isolation (five of five were PCR positive versus two of five blood culture positive). There were no amplified fragments in serum from three noninfected control mice. Lung colony counts were similar in all infected mice and reflected a similar degree of P. brasiliensis infection at the time the samples were drawn. The relatively short processing time for the PCR, when compared with culture, its sensitivity, and the possibility of using serum samples for analysis, are important factors favoring this method for the diagnosis of paracoccidioidomycosis. Future studies should include the detection of P. brasiliensis in patients with different clinical forms of paracoccidioidomycosis.
Community Detection in Tagging-Induced Hypergraphs

Social bookmarking services like Delicious let users annotate their bookmarks with “tags”, freely chosen keywords to facilitate later retrieval. The success of these systems and the central storage of the generated data has led to the creation of vast networked datasets comprised of (document, user, tag)-triples. These datasets can be thought of as commented traces of human online behaviour, and as such have been subject to a significant amount of research lately, showing, e.g. systematic convergence properties[6]. This interest is further sparked by their peculiar theoretical properties: If the triples are interpreted as edges, the resulting graphs are 3-partite 3-uniform (or 3,3-) hypergraphs, i.e. generalized graphs in which each edge connects three nodes from three distinct partitions. Many established methods from complex network analysis need to be generalized in order to be properly applicable to these structures[1, 5, 10]. Here, we discuss the theoretical intricacies and practical benefits of generalizing community detection. Community detection aims to identify groups of closely connected nodes in graphs. Identifying related nodes may be useful in itself, but furthermore helps in examining complex networks’ macrostructure by collapsing those nodes into clusters and examining the network of clusters instead. Given the complexity, noise and sheer size of social bookmarking datasets, such reductions appear crucial for distilling the latent information contained. Out of a vast space of possible approaches [4], we will examine the particularly wellestablished approach of modularity optimization[12] and its possible extensions for hypergraphs. We will proceed to discuss the challenges for generalizing modularity. In addition to discussing earlier work, we will then introduce a new approach which works natively on hypergraphs. After evaluating the different approaches, we turn to the practical side and introduce an interactive visualization tool that not only illustrates the differences between different algorithms, but more generally demonstrates the richness of the structures found in social bookmarking data.
Changes in selected physiological and laboratory measurements in elite horses competing in a 160 km endurance ride.

REASON FOR PERFORMING STUDY Limited information exists about the physiological changes and clinical problems that occur in elite horses competing in high-speed 160 km endurance races. OBJECTIVES To provide initial data describing changes in physiological and laboratory measurements in horses competing in a high-speed, 160 km endurance race under temperate conditions and to compare data between horses that successfully completed the race and those that failed to finish. METHODS Body mass (BM) was measured, blood samples were collected, and veterinary examinations performed on horses before, during, and at the finish of a CEI*** 160 km endurance race. RESULTS Of 36 horses participating in the study, 22 (61%) completed the race. Twelve horses were eliminated for lameness and 2 for persistent heart rate elevation. Mean speed of finishers was 15.2 km/h. Mean +/- s.d. BM loss of finishers at the end of the race (5.7 +/- 2.6%) was not different (P = 0.58) from BM loss of nonfinishers at elimination (6.7 +/- 34%). Similarly, there were no significant differences in heart rate or veterinary assessment of hydration at the race end for finishers as compared to the elimination point for nonfinishers. PCV increased while sodium, chloride and potassium concentrations decreased with exercise but differences between finishers and nonfinishers were not detected. In contrast, both total and ionised calcium concentrations decreased in successful horses but remained unchanged in nonfinishers. CONCLUSIONS Elite endurance horses are more likely to be eliminated from competition for lameness than metabolic problems; however, it remains unclear whether these conditions are entirely distinct. The magnitude of the decrease in sodium concentration in both finishers and nonfinishers was greater than in previous reports of 160 km rides. POTENTIAL RELEVANCE These data should be of use for both organisers and participants in elite 160 km endurance races. The tendency toward hyponatraemia as well as the difference in calcium concentrations between finishers and nonfinishers warrant further study.
Intraindividual Comparative Animal Study of &agr;- and &bgr;-Tricalcium Phosphate Degradation in Conjunction with Simultaneous Insertion of Dental Implants

An intraindividual comparative study of proximal tibial marrow defects in nine adult Goettinger miniature pigs (GMPs) was undertaken. The left side of the defect was filled with granular &bgr;-tricalcium phosphate (TCP) ceramic ad modum Cerasorb, and the right side was filled with granular &agr;-TCP ceramic ad modum Biobase &agr; pore. Simultaneously, dental screw implants were inserted in each ceramic and fixed within the orthotopically replanted corticalis lids. Control defects were made in two other animals. The survival period ranged from 4 to 86 weeks (control study, 16 and 20 weeks). The reorganization and degree of bone regeneration, dynamics of ceramic degradation, and remodeling characteristics of the bone regenerate referring to osseo-integration of the dental implants were examined histomorphologically in nondecalcified specimens. The results reveal that both ceramic types were osteoconductive exclusively. Centripetally oriented angiogene bone regeneration occurred at the margins of the circular defects. Ceramic degradation was performed hydrolytically and within cells. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that decomposition of the intratrabecularly integrated ceramic residues underlies a dynamic process of degradation. Within 86 weeks, nearly 80% to 90% of the larger &agr;-TCP granules, and nearly 90% to 95% of the &bgr;-TCP granules were degraded. At this time, especially for the &agr;-TCP modification, ceramic microparticles were found in the marrow, either unbound or within polynuclear macrophages. The predictable degradation of both ceramic types provides an early functional adaptation of bone regenerates and facilitates a biofunctional, anisotropic orientation of the neotrabeculae without delay. It is concluded that because of the initially pronounced accumulation of macrophages, dental implants should not be inserted simultaneously with ceramic, but after further progress of ceramic degradation (5 to 6 months after TCP implantation).
Sport entrepreneurship: challenges and directions for future research

The aim of this paper is to structure the existing and emerging field of ‘sport entrepreneurship’ as well as to develop suggestions for future research. This paper examines the role of the sports entrepreneur and entrepreneurial process in new venture creation projects. This paper contributes to a general understanding of entrepreneurship in the sports context and suggests how further theoretical and empirical work on entrepreneurship needs to be conducted in the sports context. The major managerial and practical implications of sports entrepreneurship in this paper are to develop more entrepreneurial thinking in sports-related ventures. This paper is the first to focus on the future potential of sports entrepreneurship in creating entrepreneurial ventures, thereby providing a strong theoretical foundation for future research work.
Disclosure, Conservatism and the Cost of Equity Capital: A Review of the Foundation Literature

In this review piece, we survey the literature on the cost of equity capital implications of corporate disclosure and conservative accounting policy choice decisions with the principle objective of providing insights into the design and methodological issues, which underlie the empirical investigations. We begin with a review of the analytical studies most typically cited in the empirical research as providing a theoretical foundation. We then turn to consider literature that offers insights into the selection of proxies for each of our points of interest, cost of equity capital, disclosure quality and accounting conservatism. As a final step, we review selected empirical studies to illustrate the relevant evidence found within the literature. Based on our review, we interpret the literature as providing the researcher with only limited direct guidance on the appropriate choice of measure for each of the constructs of interest. Further, we view the literature as raising questions about both the interpretation of empirical findings in the face of measurement concerns and the suitability of certain theoretical arguments to the research setting. Overall, perhaps the message which is most clear is that one of the most controversial and fundamental issues underlying the literature is the issue of the diversifiability or nondiversifiability of information effects.
ROBUST ASSET ALLOCATION WITH BENCHMARKED OBJECTIVES

In this paper, we introduce a new approach for finding robust portfolios when there is model uncertainty. It differs from the usual worst‐case approach in that a (dynamic) portfolio is evaluated not only by its performance when there is an adversarial opponent (“nature”), but also by its performance relative to a stochastic benchmark. The benchmark corresponds to the wealth of a fictitious benchmark investor who invests optimally given knowledge of the model chosen by nature, so in this regard, our objective has the flavor of min–max regret. This relative performance approach has several important properties: (i) optimal portfolios seek to perform well over the entire range of models and not just the worst case, and hence are less pessimistic than those obtained from the usual worst‐case approach; (ii) the dynamic problem reduces to a convex static optimization problem under reasonable choices of the benchmark portfolio for important classes of models including ambiguous jump‐diffusions; and (iii) this static problem is dual to a Bayesian version of a single period asset allocation problem where the prior on the unknown parameters (for the dual problem) correspond to the Lagrange multipliers in this duality relationship. This dual static problem can be interpreted as a less pessimistic alternative to the single period worst‐case Markowitz problem. More generally, this duality suggests that learning and robustness are closely related when benchmarked objectives are used.
A European skills framework?—but what are skills? Anglo‐Saxon versus German concepts

With the proposed introduction of a common framework for comparing qualifications within the European Union as a result of the Lisbon Agreement of 2000, the question of commonly agreed transnational concepts of skills and qualifications has become a pressing political and practical issue. The paper argues that there are grounds for doubting that there is a ready translation of the English terms ‘skill’ and ‘qualification’ in a way that avoids problems of comparing and calibrating German and English vocational qualifications. Reasons for this difficulty are explored, the most important of which relate to: a) the conceptual structure of skill and its cognates in the two languages; b) the differing socio‐political role of qualifications; c) different industrial structures and labour processes; d) differences in institutions regulating vocational education and training. These problems are discussed in relation to examples of similar industries and occupations and apparently similar levels of qualification in England and Germany.
The Markov Switching Acd Model

We propose a new framework for modelling time dependence in duration processes on financial markets. The well known autoregressive conditional duration (ACD) approach introduced by Engle and Russell (1998) will be extended in a way that allows the conditional expectation of the duration process to depend on an unobservable stochastic process, which is modelled via a Markov chain. The Markov switching ACD model (MSACD) is a very flexible tool for description and forecasting of financial duration processes. In addition the introduction of an unobservable, discrete valued regime variable can be justified in the light of recent market microstructure theories. In an empirical application we show, that the MSACD approach is able to capture several specific characteristics of inter trade durations while alternative ACD models fail. Furthermore, we use the MSACD to test implications of a sequential trade model.
Time-Changing Alpha? The Case of Australian International Mutual Funds

Tests for active management inevitably focus on long periods. Yet, implicit in these tests is the assumption that active management generates a stable excess return. We argue that this assumption is not appropriate for active management where the emphasis is on identifying profitable trading strategies. Consistent with this conjecture, we find evidence of time-changing alpha using a sample of Australian international funds over the period from July 1995 to January 2005. Regardless, few international funds show consistent positive excess returns over the period.
Pharmacometric Characterization of Efavirenz Developmental Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacogenetics in HIV-Infected Children

ABSTRACT The aim of this analysis was to create a pharmacometric model of efavirenz developmental pharmacokinetics and pharmacogenetics in HIV-infected children. The data consisted of 3,172 plasma concentrations from 96 HIV-1-infected children who participated in the Pediatric AIDS Clinical Trials Group 382 (PACTG382) study. Analyses were performed using NONMEM, and the impacts of body weight, age, race, sex, formulation, liver function, and cytochrome P450 2B6 (CYP2B6)-G516T and multidrug-resistance transporter gene (MDR1)-C3435T polymorphisms were assessed. A one-compartment model using weight-based allometry on oral clearance and apparent volume of distribution adequately described the data. A sigmoid maximum-effect (Emax) maturation model demonstrated an increase in oral clearance with age to reach 90% of its mature level by the age of 9 months. The liquid formulation bioavailability relative to the capsule was found to increase with age to reach 90% of its mature value by the age of 8 years. The CYP2B6-G516T polymorphism decreased oral clearance, while the MDR1-C3435T polymorphism demonstrated no effect.
A study of determinants of intellectual capital performance in banks: the UK case

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of intellectual capital performance in the UK banks over the period 1999‐2005.Design/methodology/approach – Multiple regression analysis is used to test the relationship between the intellectual capital performance as a dependent variable and certain independent variables.Findings – Results indicate that the standard variables, bank profitability and bank risk, are important. The results also show that investment in information technology (IT) systems, bank efficiency, barriers to entry and efficiency of investment in intellectual capital variables, which have not been considered in previous studies, have a significant impact on intellectual capital performance.Research limitations/implications – More evidence is needed on the determinants of intellectual capital performance before any generalisation of the results can be made. In addition, the empirical tests were conducted only on the Major British Banks Group over the period 1999‐20.