Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Constructing Interfaces: the Neighbourhood Discourse in EU External Policy

Abstract This article seeks to analyse European Union rhetoric concerning its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). The article employs an analytical framework built on regional security complex theory and the concepts of interface and recognition and analyses official rhetoric from EU representatives (primarily from the Commission but also the Council) in terms of EU self‐image, images of the neighbourhood and perceptions of the interaction logic between the EU and the neighbourhood. The article concludes that the EU perceives itself as the motor of European security and as superior to the neighbourhood, but also that EU representatives simultaneously note the interdependent character of the relationship and frame the ENP policy programme in terms of joint ownership.
Impact of Store Personality Antecedents on Store Personality Dimensions: An Empirical Study of Department Retail Brands

The objective of this study was to explore the impact of store personality antecedents on store personality dimensions. A mall-intercept survey was undertaken using a systematic sampling of department store shoppers of age 18 years and above in Kolkata, a metropolitan city of India. Questionnaire was used to collect data from busy shopping malls or centres located in different places of Kolkata with systematic sampling. The impact of store personality antecedents on store personality dimensions was explored using stepwise regression analysis. Results revealed that different sets of store personality antecedent affect various department store personality dimensions differently. The impacts of all sets are positive and significant. Arguably, this article was the first to explore the link between store personality antecedents and store personality dimensions in Indian and department store personality contexts.
If one goes up the other must come down: Examining ipsative relationships between math and English self-concept trajectories across high school.

BACKGROUND The Internal-External frame of reference (IE) model suggests that as self-concept in one domain goes up (e.g., English) self-concept in other domains (e.g., mathematics) should go down (ipsative self-concept hypothesis). AIMS To our knowledge this assumption has not been tested. Testing this effect also provides a context for illustrating different approaches to the study of growth with longitudinal data. SAMPLE We use cohort sequential data from 2,781 of Year 7 to Year 11 Australian high school students followed across a total of 10 time waves 6 months apart. METHOD Three different approaches to testing the ipsative self-concept hypothesis were used: Autoregressive cross-lagged models, latent growth curve models, and autoregressive latent trajectory models (ALT); using achievement as a time varying covariate. RESULTS Cross-lagged and growth curve models provided little evidence of ipsative relationships between English and math self-concept. However, ALT models suggested that a rise above trend in one self-concept domain resulted in a decline from trend in self-concept in another domain. CONCLUSION Implications for self-concept theory, interventions, and statistical methods for the study of growth are discussed.
An Outbreak of Avian Cholera in Wild Waterfowl in Ordos Wetland, Inner Mongolia, China

Eleven species of wild waterfowl (Anseriformes and Charadriiformes) were found dead in the Hongjian Nur Lake in the Ordos wetland, Inner Mongolia of northern China, in 2007. Pasteurella multocida was isolated from tissue samples of dead and sick birds and identified as P. multocida subsp. multocida, serotype A1, using serologic and molecular techniques. Eight bird species in this outbreak had never been previously reported with P. m. multocida infection. This was also the first report of fowl cholera in wild waterfowl in China.
The Effect of Organizational Justice and Organizational Cynicism on the Organizational Commitment: An Application in Primary Education Institutions

Accepted: 16.12. 2014 There is a large cycle of works on regarding organizational justice, organizational cynicism and organizational commitment of teachers. However, no study has been found that has been conducted on the correlation among effect of organizational justice, organizational cynicism and organizational commitment and their explaining ratios of each other. The level of correlation and the effect of the organizational justice, organizational cynicism and organizational commitment with each other and explaining ratios of each other have been tested in this research. In line with this purpose, seven hypotheses were developed. The participant group in the study consists of 515 elementary school teachers who are working in primary education institutions of Diyarbakir province. The relational survey model was utilized while conducting the research. Also “Organizational Justice Scale”, “Organizational Cynicism Scale” and “Organizational Commitment Scale” were utilized in this research. For confirmatory factor analyses and structural equality model, SPSS and AMOS packaged software were utilized. First of the most important findings of the study is that organizational justice and organizational cynicism are significant predictors of organizational commitment. Second is that organizational cynicism has a function of partial mediator between organizational justice and organizational commitment.
Modeling The Minimum Time Needed To Economic Maturity

A general equilibrium model has been constructed in a stochastic endogenous growth economy driven by an Ito-Levy diffusion process. The minimum time to “economic maturity” for an underdeveloped economy has been computed both in the preference manifold of the modified Ramsey fashion and in that of the modified Radner fashion with its support, i.e., fiscal policies and savings strategy, endogenously determined. Furthermore, the effects of different information structures to the endogenous time have been thoroughly investigated, and local sensitivity analyses of optimal consumption per capita with respect to the initial level of capital stock per capita have been smoothly incorporated into the current macroeconomic model.
Downwards sloping demand curves for stock

– The purpose of the analysis is to estimate price elasticities of demand for individual FTSE‐100 stocks between 1 August 1994 and 31 July 1995. , – This paper measures excess demand in order to measure the slope of the demand curve for individual stocks. An econometric approach is adopted that models the slope of the excess demand curve within an econometric framework using signed market maker transactions data between 1 August 1994 and 31 July 1995. , – The findings confirm that the demand curves for individual stocks do slope downwards. For example, the mean estimated percentage fall in stock price caused by a new share issue that is 1 per cent of the existing number of outstanding shares is −5.6. , – Downward sloping demand curves pose difficulties for theories in finance that rely on the law of one price and price‐takers in competitive markets. For example, the dividend policy and capital structure irrelevance theorems of corporate finance, and the efficient markets hypothesis assumption that the price of a stock is determined only by information about future cash flows and the discount rate are not consistent with a downward sloping demand curve. , – The slope of the demand curve is estimated using an econometric model and market makers' transactions data for specific stocks. This approach identifies observable unexpected shifts in the demand for a stock as unexpected changes in market makers' inventories. This approach is superior to event studies because it provides multiple observations that enable the slope of the demand curve to be quantified with sufficient confidence to calculate the price elasticity of demand for the stock.
Erythrocyte anion exchanger activity and intracellular pH in essential hypertension.

The present study was designed to examine the activity of the sodium-independent chloride-bicarbonate anion exchanger and the sodium-proton exchanger in erythrocytes of 30 normotensive and 35 hypertensive subjects and its relation to the previously reported decrease in erythrocyte pH. Erythrocyte cytosolic pH was measured by the pH-sensitive fluorescent probe 2'-7'-bis(2-carboxyethyl)- 5(6)-carboxyfluorescein. The activity of the anion exchanger was determined by acidifying cell pH and measuring the initial rate of the net sodium-independent, 4,4'-diisothiocyanatostilbene-2,2'-disulfonic acid-sensitive, bicarbonate influx driven by an outward proton gradient. The activity of the sodium-proton exchanger was determined by acidifying cell pH and measuring the initial rate of the net sodium-dependent proton efflux driven by an outward proton gradient. The activity of the anion exchanger was higher in hypertensive than control individuals (18,863 +/- 1081 vs 15,629 +/- 897 mmol/L cells per hour, P < .05). The activity of the sodium-proton exchanger was higher in hypertensive than control individuals (301 +/- 45 vs 162 +/- 23 mmol/L cells per hour, P < .005). Basal erythrocyte pH was lower in hypertensive than control individuals (7.27 +/- 0.02 vs 7.33 +/- 0.01, mean +/- SEM, P < .05). With the 100% confidence (lower) limit of the normotensive population as a cutoff point, a subgroup of 11 hypertensive patients had an abnormally low erythrocyte pH (< 7.19). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Management Buyout Proposals and Inside Information

This paper explores stock price behavior surrounding withdrawn buyout proposals to determine whether managers' proposal announcements reveal any information that is unrelated to the efficiency gains associated with completed buyouts. On average, firms whose managers withdraw buyout proposals do not sustain significantly positive stock price effects unless they receive subsequent acquisition bids. In addition, managers of firms with completed buyouts are no more likely to have access to inside information than managers who withdrew proposals. The author interprets this evidence as inconsistent with the notion that inside information commonly motivates management buyout proposals. Copyright 1992 by American Finance Association.
Adaptive aspirations: performance consequences of risk preferences at extremes and alternative reference groups

Goals or aspirations and their relationships to risk taking and performance are important issues in both psychology and strategic management. The concept of adaptive aspirations, as discussed in Cyert and March's Behavioral Theory of the Firm, has long been a topic of interest in both fields. Moreover, many studies in strategy have focused on risk and/or extreme performance. In the current paper, we build on earlier models of adaptive aspirations. We introduce into the models a new risk preference function that incorporates changes in risk preference at extremes of performance. Based on empirical studies and the managerial literature, we also introduce alternative strategies for setting reference groups. Simulations of the resulting models suggest important differences in outcomes from earlier studies and this invites further empirical investigation. These simulations also have significant implications for managerial goal setting. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The effect of endurance exercise-induced lactacidosis on biochemical markers of bone turnover

Abstract Background: Stress fractures are frequent injuries among athletes. In vitro, decreases in pH stimulate osteoclasts and inhibit osteoblasts. We hypothesized that exercise-induced lactacidosis stimulates osteoclasts and reduces osteoblast activity in vivo. Methods: A total of 32 volunteers (MA, male athletes; MCo, male controls; female athletes; and female controls) performed three 60-min cycle ergometer tests at 75%, 95% and 110% of their individual anaerobic threshold (IAT). Blood was taken before and at 3 and 24 h after exercise. Osteocalcin (OC), pro-collagen type I N-terminal peptide (PINP), C-terminal telopeptides of collagen I (CTx) and tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) were measured. Results: At 75% and 95% IAT, pH did not change. At 110% IAT, pH decreased in MA by 0.08 units (p=0.041) and in MCo by 0.03 units (p=0.017). The pH results were substantiated by circulating lactate concentrations. The bone resorption markers TRAP and CTx were not consistently modified by any of the exercise tests. Exercise at 75% decreased OC and PINP in all groups. Exercise at 95% and 110% did not induce homogeneous effects. Conclusions: Anaerobic exercise does not systemically affect bone turnover, suggesting that exercise-induced acidosis is not involved in the pathogenesis of stress fractures. Clin Chem Lab Med 2007;45:1381–9.
Resource Structuring or Capability Building? An Empirical Study of the Business Value of Information Technology

This paper examines two ways to create business value of information technology (BVIT): resource structuring and capability building. We develop a research model positing that IT resources and IT capabilities enhance a firm's performance by providing support to its competitive strategies and core competencies, and the strengths of these supports vary in accord with environmental dynamism. The model is empirically tested using data collected from 296 firms in China. It is found that IT resources generate more business effects in stable environments than in dynamic environments, while IT capabilities generate more business effects in dynamic environments than in stable environments. The results suggest that the BVIT creation mechanism in stable environments is primarily resource structuring while the mechanism in dynamic environments is primarily capability building.
A multiscale compressed video saliency detection model based on ant colony optimization

In this paper, a novel multiscale visual saliency detection algorithm combining spatiotemporal features and ant colony optimization is proposed. In the method, both the spatial information, such as luminance, chrominance and texture, and the temporal information, namely motion, are used to fulfill a better prediction of visual saliency. Besides, the information we use in the method are all extracted directly from the compressed video bitstreams to avoid the time-consuming decompressing process. The concept of multiscale is introduced. We use graphs of different scales constructed by dividing the video frames into blocks of different sizes to achieve more human-eye adaptability. Then the spatial features, namely luminance, chrominance and texture, are extracted directly from discrete cosine transform coefficients while the temporal information are extracted from the motion vectors to form the heuristic matrices. Next, the heuristic matrixes are used as part of the ant colony optimization process. Each heuristic matrix is used to steer the ants in the algorithm and the ants deposit pheromone on the graph. The pheromone is updated through attenuation and evaporation thus forming spatial/temporal saliency maps. Finally, the spatial and temporal saliency maps of each scale are fused together through adaptive fusion, and maps of different scales are fused through linear fusion. Since the model is constructed using information in compressed domain individually, the decompression process is avoided to save more time and to be suitable for videos transmitted on the network. Besides, the proposed method has been extensively tested on several video databases with sequences in various scenes. Through experiments it can be seen that in both quantitative evaluation scores and intuitive visual effects, the algorithm in this paper exhibits a better performance compared to the contrast methods in this paper.
The Rate of Return Earned by Lessees under Cash Bonus Bidding for OCS Oil and Gas Leases

The remaining oil and gas reserves and resources of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) represent one of America's largest publicly owned assets. Through 1980, OCS oil and gas leases had produced $62.8 billion in gross revenue and $41.3 billion in bonus, royalty, and rental payments to the federal government (U.S. Geological Survey, 1981).
Nature and properties of a repulsive Fermi gas in the upper branch of the energy spectrum.

We generalize the Noziéres-Schmitt-Rink method to study the repulsive Fermi gas in the absence of molecule formation, i.e., in the so-called "upper branch. " We find that the system remains stable except close to resonance at sufficiently low temperatures. With increasing scattering length, the energy density of the system attains a maximum at a positive scattering length before resonance. This is shown to arise from Pauli blocking which causes the bound states of fermion pairs of different momenta to disappear at different scattering lengths. At the point of maximum energy, the compressibility of the system is substantially reduced, leading to a sizable uniform density core in a trapped gas. The change in spin susceptibility with increasing scattering length is moderate and does not indicate any magnetic instability. These features should also manifest in Fermi gases with unequal masses and/or spin populations.
The effect of plane of nutrition during rearing on growth, production, reproduction and health of dairy cattle. III. Milk production during the first three lactations

1. The fat-corrected milk yields and butterfat and solids-not-fat percentages of the milk of heifers reared on the four planes of nutrition described in part 1 of this series are compared, i.e. high high (HH), high low (HL), low low (LL), low high (LH). 2. The most significant feature of the F.C. M. yields was the poor performance of the HL group in each lactation. When variability due to differences in lactation length had been eliminated the yields of the HL group in the first and second lactations were found to be significantly lower than those of the other treatment groups. 3. In the first lactation the mean B.F. percentages of HH, LH, HL and IX animals were respectively 3·92, 3·85, 3·81 and 3·74. These differences were significant at the 5% level. When the weekly yields and percentages of the HH and LL groups were compared it was found that the difference was almost entirely confined to the first 6 weeks of lactation. In the second and third lactations the mean B.F. percentages of all groups were similar. 4. Only in the second lactation were the S.N. F. percentages significantly different between groups. No explanation can be offered. 5. A comparison of the live-weight changes of HH and LL animals following successive calvings showed that recovery by the LL animals was most rapid immediately following first parturition and also during the first and second dry periods. 6. The plane of nutrition during rearing had no apparent effect on the pattern of change in milk yield and composition between first and third lactations, except that HH animals showed a more uniform rate of fall in S.N. F. % between one lactation and the next compared with the other three groups. Heifer lactations were longer and the milk had higher contents of B.F. and S.N. F. than later lactations. 7. The estimated feed costs of the rearing from birth to first calving of the HH, LH, HL and LL animals were markedly different. 8. The results are discussed in relation to practice.
Safety and efficacy of fidaxomicin in the treatment of Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea

Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD) is the most common cause of healthcare-associated diarrhea. The current recommended treatment regimens of metronidazole and vancomycin have not changed in nearly 25 years. Fidaxomicin, an exceedingly narrow spectrum macrolide antibiotic, was recently approved for the treatment of CDAD. In phase III clinical trials, fidaxomicin was noninferior to vancomycin in achieving clinical cure of CDAD. Furthermore, fidaxomicin was associated with fewer recurrences of CDAD compared with vancomycin in clinical trials. These results, combined with the ease of administration and a good safety profile, make fidaxomicin an attractive treatment option for treating CDAD.
Dynamic Contract Breach

This paper studies the design of optimal, privately-stipulated damages when breach of contract is possible at more than one point in time. It offers an intuitive explanation for why cancellation fees for some services (e.g., hotel reservations) increase as the time for performance approaches. If the seller makes investments over time to improve her value from trade, she will protect the value of her investments by demanding a higher compensation when the buyer breaches their contract at a time closer to when contract performance is due. Furthermore, it is shown that if the seller may be able to find an alternate buyer when breach occurs early but not when breach occurs late, the amount by which the damage for late breach exceeds the damage for early breach is increasing in the probability of finding an alternate buyer. (This result may explain why some hotels impose larger penalties for last-minute cancellations during the high season than during the low season.) When the probability of finding an alternate buyer is endogenized, the seller's private incentive to mitigate breach damages is shown to be socially insufficient whenever she does not have complete bargaining power with the alternate buyer. Finally, if renegotiation is possible after the arrival of each perfectly competitive entrant, the efficient breach and investment decisions are shown to be implementable with the same efficient expectation damages that implement the efficient outcomes absent renegotiation.
Neural correlates of recovery from aphasia after damage to left inferior frontal cortex

Objective: To determine neural correlates of recovery from aphasia after left frontal injury. Methods: The authors studied the verbal performance of patients with infarcts centered in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), using a battery of attention-demanding lexical tasks that normally activate the left IFG and a simpler reading task that does not normally recruit the left IFG. The authors used positron emission tomography (PET) and functional MRI (fMRI) to record neural activity in the same group of patients during word-stem completion, one of the attention-demanding lexical tasks. To identify potential neural correlates of compensation/recovery, they analyzed the resulting data for the group as a whole (PET, fMRI) and also for each participant (fMRI). Results: Patients with damage to the left IFG were impaired on all attention-demanding lexical tasks, but they completed the word-reading tasks normally. The imaging studies demonstrated a stronger-than-normal response in the right IFG, a region homologous to the damaged left IFG. The level of activation in the right IFG did not correlate with verbal performance, however. In addition, a perilesional response within the damaged left IFG was localized in the two patients who gave the best performance in the word-stem completion task and showed the most complete recovery from aphasia. Conclusions: Right-IFG activity may represent either the recruitment of a preexisting neural pathway through alternative behavioral strategies or an anomalous response caused by removal of the left IFG. Perilesional activity in the left IFG may represent sparing or restoration of normal function in peri-infarctual tissue that was inactive early on after injury. This activity may be of greater functional significance than right IFG activity because it was associated with more normal verbal performance.