Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rising Food Prices, Food Price Volatility, and Social Unrest

Can food prices cause social unrest? Throughout history, riots have frequently broken out, ostensibly as a consequence of high food prices. Using monthly data at the international level, this article studies the impact of food prices - food price levels as well as food price volatility - on social unrest. Because food prices and social unrest are jointly determined, data on natural disasters are used to identify the causal relationship flowing from food price levels to social unrest. Results indicate that for the period 1990-2011, food price increases have led to increases in social unrest, whereas food price volatility has not been associated with increases in social unrest. These results are robust to alternative definitions of social unrest, to using real or nominal prices, to using commodity-specific price indices instead of aggregated price indices, to alternative definitions of the instrumental variable, to alternative definitions of volatility, and to controlling for non-food-related social unrest.
Increasing mammography among women aged 40-74 by use of a stage-matched, tailored intervention.

BACKGROUND Tailoring is a promising technique for encouraging greater performance of health-related behaviors. Tailored interventions are designed to be more individualized to personal characteristics, in contrast to "standard" interventions where all participants receive the same materials. METHODS A total of N = 1864 women aged 40-74 were recruited from a staff model HMO and randomly assigned to one of three intervention groups: (a) No Educational Materials, (b) Standard Materials, and (c) Stage-Matched Materials. A provider-directed component was common across all three conditions. The Standard and Stage-Matched groups each received two mailed educational packets after baseline and follow-up telephone interviews. The Stage-Matched intervention was based on the Transtheoretical Model of behavior change. RESULTS Analyses of n = 1397 women (after all attrition) showed that receipt of mammography after the baseline interview was higher for the Stage-Matched group (63.6%) than for the No Materials group (54.9%; OR = 1.43, 95% CI = 1.10, 1.86). The Standard intervention group was intermediate (58. 5%). The Standard group did not differ from the No Materials group, but did differ from the Stage-Matched group in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS Stage-matched, tailored materials may be a means to encourage screening mammography. Such interventions can be implemented by telephone and mail.
Sleep patterns and acute physical exercise: the effects of gender, sleep disturbances, type and time of physical exercise.

AIM Aim of the study was to determine which factors influence sleep patterns after a single session of physical exercise. METHODS Adult sedentary volunteers (N.=221; 104 men and 117 women) aged 31.40±9.40 were randomised into groups with three different types of physical exercise (resistance, aerobic and interval). After the exercise protocol was explained, each volunteer was given the first polysomnographic (PSG) and performed the acute session of physical exercise (resistance: based on a 1RM test; aerobic: based on a maximum effort test (MET) and interval: 10 series with 4-minute intervals between series). The second PSG was performed the day after the acute session of physical exercise. RESULTS A negative correlation was found between sleep latency and the acute physical exercise session practiced in the evening, and a positive correlation was found between the total sleep time and female gender. The REM sleep stage (%) was positively correlated with the control, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and periodic leg movement (PLM) groups and the acute physical exercise session practiced in the morning. Positive correlations were observed in the arousal index and the PLM group and female gender; the PLM index and the control and OSA groups; minimum oxygen saturation and the OSA and PLM groups. CONCLUSION Therefore, these results suggested that such factors as gender, the presence of sleep disturbance (PLM and/or OSA), type of physical exercise (aerobic, resistance or interval) and the time that it was practiced (morning, afternoon or evening) can influence sleep patterns after a single session of physical exercise. However, the gender seems to be the most important factor to influence sleep pattern in the situation studied.
Financial Crisis as a Catalyst of Legal Reforms: The Case of Asia

This paper discusses how financial crises in emerging Asia and Japan worked as catalysts for legal reforms. The responses of six Asian countries with different legal histories to financial crises that posed similar challenges are of both legal and economic interest. We first provide a theoretical framework that focuses on law and economics. We then review the basic approaches adopted by the Asian countries affected by financial crises in 1997â€“1998 to bank and corporate restructuring and to legal and other reforms. Finally we examine indicators that measure the quality of legal institutions (regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption) for the six countries to determine whether these indicators show improvement over time. We find that all six countries pursued significant legal and judicial reforms, but the indicators exhibit mixed results : the Republic of Korea shows clear improvements in all aspects, while the Philippines exhibits clear deterioration and Indonesia indicates a steep decline followed by remarkable improvement. We argue that reforms of the economic laws alone cannot improve the quality of entire legal and judicial systems of countries. What matters is the enforcement of substantive law by procedural law, the efficiency of the justice system, and other political and social factors. In the case of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, the colonial â€œtransplant effectâ€ of Western legal systems may have made the implementation of laws a significant challenge. In Thailand, implementation was affected by the â€œyellow shirtsâ€ (anti-Thaksin) versus â€œred shirtsâ€ (pro-Thaksin) conflict. Long time lags, perhaps of several decades, may be needed to observe how de jure changes to substantive laws lead to de facto improvements of legal institutions.
Role of bilateral suprazygomatic maxillary nerve block in primary surgery for soft palate cleft and soft-hard palate cleft

Introduction Bilateral suprazygomatic maxillary nerve block seems to play an important role in clinical tolerance and postoperative management of primary cleft palate surgery. Objective Study the use of bilateral suprazygomatic maxillary nerve block in the global management of primary closing surgery of cleft palates. Materials and methods Monocenter, retrospective study evaluating general anesthesia (GA) vs. bilateral suprazygomatic maxillary nerve block under sedation in primary surgery of cleft palate. Postoperative management, anesthetic parameters and hospital analgesia were analyzed. Results 49 patients (23 GA vs. 26 LRA) were included (mean age = 13.5 months). The postoperative anesthetic time is significantly reduced, just like the use of morphine during surgery and Step II analgesics post-surgery in the LRA group. Conclusion Anesthetic management associating sedation and bilateral suprazygomatic maxillary nerve block is highly relevant in the care management of cleft palates.
Policy support for innovative entrepreneurship : an empirical evaluation

Entrepreneurship plays an increasingly prominent role in both academic and policy circles. It is regarded as the driving force behind structural change that links investments in knowledge with economic growth. The increased role of new and small enterprises has led to an increase in entrepreneurship policies aimed at encouraging more people to consider entrepreneurship as an option and act on a business idea. This thesis examines policy measures that are offered to nascent and young entrepreneurs along the founding process, especially public business assistance, financial support schemes and earmarked subsidies for R&D. Data for this study were collected by the Thuringian Founder Study (Thuringer Grunder Studie), an interdisciplinary project on the success and failure of innovative start-ups in the East German state of Thuringia. Standardized in-depth interviews allow conducting propensity score matching which is used to correct for selection bias between assisted and non-assisted start-ups. The thesis argues that having a clear-cut rationale for policy intervention is the only way precise policy targeting becomes possible. Precise policy targeting toward incidences of market failure will direct public funds where they are most needed and thus where they will be most effective and efficient. However, the thesis emphasizes the difficulties of policy targeting toward incidences of market failure (whose existence is controversial in itself). The rationale behind public policy intervention in R&D is the clearest of all those studied in this thesis. Consistently, the empirical analyses provide evidence of the effectiveness of R&D subsidies in inducing additional employment and patent activity.
Distance analysis of music melodies created by distributed interactive GA

In the area of product design, adding user's kansei (feelings) on the products is important for emphasizing its value. Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC) is well known method that searches optimal or better media contents suited for each user's kansei. Some previous studies applied IEC into problem of multiple users. Purpose of the present study is to compare Distributed Interactive Genetic Algorithm (DIGA) and Interactive Genetic Algorithm (IGA) in a view point of creating music melody. We conducted listening experiments for investigating efficiency of the DIGA and IGA for creation of music melody. Ten persons were divided into five pairs, the pair participated in the experiment as subjects simultaneously. As an index of searching space of the pair, distance of melodies between the subjects in the pair in each generation was investigated. As a result, a trend of decrease in the distance was observed in the DIGA where exchange of the best individuals between the subjects.
Credit Supply and Contracting on Hard Information in Debt Markets

We use fair value adoption as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the effect of hard information on credit supply through a contracting channel. After fair value adoption, usage of financial covenants depending on capital-based fair value treatments significantly declined. Capital-based covenant usage by treated borrowers in the financial sector dropped by 7.7% relative to control borrowers. They also experienced an 8.2% relative drop in credit supply, suggesting that the debt contracting space shrunk. Affected borrowers did not compensate with alternative funding sources; they decreased their own lending by 2.8%, propagating these contracting effects to the real economy.
The effects of air pollution on the lipid balance of traffic police personnel.

BACKGROUND The purpose of our study was to evaluate the effects of urban pollution on the lipid balance of members of a municipal police force in a big city. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Our case-control study comprised 118 male members of the police force performing traffic duties, and 118 blood donors who perform office work, and was paired by age and length of service. Total cholesterol, HDL and triglycerides were studied. RESULTS The comparison of the average values of HDL cholesterol and triglycerides between the exposed traffic police group and the control group showed significant differences. The difference in the frequency distributions of HDL cholesterol and triglycerides between the exposed group and control group was significant as well. The results suggest the possibility of an alteration in the lipid balance among asymptomatic people who are exposed to air pollution. CONCLUSION The results suggest that some chemical agents (such as carbon dioxide) contained in the urban pollution of a big city could cause dyslipidemia among people exposed to such air pollution.
Practicality of screening urinalyses in asymptomatic children in a primary care setting.

The value of screening for proteinuria in the pediatric age group is a subject of current debate. Previous studies have1,2 reported proteinuria prevalence rates of 5.4% to 14.8% when random urine samples were tested. Since the test for proteinuria is simple and inexpensive, Bailey et al.3 recommended that indicator strip testing for proteinuria be done by the primary physician in preschool, preadolescent, and adolescent children. The Committee on Standards of Child Health Care4 suggests at least dipstick urinalyses as part of a regular health maintenance program. Haggerty5 recommends using only the dipstick tests for protein and glucose since these tests are simple and adequate. However, Bailey et al.3 and North6 do not recommend glucose screening since there is a low probability of finding new cases of diabetes mellitus. Dodge et al.7 are reluctant to recommend widespread screening in schoolchildren for proteinuria and hematuria because the significance of these two conditions is unknown in asymptomatic children. For those found to have proteinuria and/or hematuria, West8 proposes a systematic evaluation including determination of certain serum chemical values, radiographic studies, and even renal biopsy. To study the practicality of such a screening test in a primary care setting, we have reviewed 2,309 random dipstick urinalyses collected over a 26-month period. METHODS Indicator strip testing (Labstix) was performed on random urine samples of all eligible patients on their first visit for whatever reason to the pediatric clinic of West End Health Center, Houston. The center is one of a network of seven neighborhood clinics of the Harris County Hospital District and serves a low to moderate socioeconomic group.
Mine Burial Experiments at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory

Several experiments to measure postimpact burial of seafloor mines by scour and fill have been conducted near the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory (MVCO, Edgartown, MA). The sedimentary environment at MVCO consists of a series of rippled scour depressions (RSDs), which are large scale bedforms with alternating areas of coarse and fine sand. This allows simultaneous mine burial experiments in both coarse and fine sand under almost identical hydrodynamic forcing conditions. Two preliminary sets of mine scour burial experiments were conducted during winters 2001-2002 in fine sand and 2002-2003 in coarse sand with a single optically instrumented mine in the field of view of a rotary sidescan sonar. From October 2003 to April of 2004, ten instrumented mines were deployed along with several sonar systems to image mine behavior and to characterize bedform and oceanographic processes. In fine sand, the sonar imagery of the mines revealed that large scour pits form around the mines during energetic wave events. Mines fell into their own scour pits, aligned with the dominant wave crests and became level with the ambient seafloor after several energetic wave events. In quiescent periods, after the energetic wave events, the scour pits episodically infilled with mud. After several scour and infilling events, the scour pits were completely filled and a layer of fine sand covered both the mines and the scour pits, leaving no visible evidence of the mines. In the coarse sand, mines were observed to bury until the exposed height above the ripple crests was approximately the same as the large wave orbital ripple height (wavelengths of 50-125 cm and heights of 10-20 cm). A hypothesis for the physical mechanism responsible for this partial burial in the presence of large bedforms is that the mines bury until they present roughly the same hydrodynamic roughness as the orbital-scale bedforms present in coarse sand.
Gate-keeping Manifest in Secondary Schools

The study undertook to investigate the manifestation of gate-keeping particularly in secondary schools. Phenomenological research design which emphasises the participants’ lived experiences was used. Face-to-face as well as focus group interviews were used to gather data. Forty-four (44) third year Bachelor of Education Sociology students constituted the population for this study. Purposive sampling was used to select a sample of 16 participants comprising two secondary school administrators, 12 secondary school teachers and two parents. It emerged from the study that gate-keeping in secondary schools manifests through enrolment cut off entry points, affordable fees, the cultural and sporting domains of the curriculum, learners’ connection to influential figures, religious affiliation of the learner, school pass rate and distance. It was recommended that the stakeholders in education can target dealing with gate-keepers to secondary education.
Hemivertebra: Prenatal Diagnosis, Incidence and Characteristics

Objective: Hemivertebra is a rare congenital spinal anomaly where only one side of the vertebral body develops, resulting in deformation of the spine, such as scoliosis, lordosis, or kyphosis. We aimed to determine the incidence and clinical characteristics of hemivertebra. Patients and Methods: We present three fetuses with a prenatal ultrasonographic diagnosis of hemivertebra at 15–22 weeks’ gestation, and we determine the incidence and clinical characteristics of hemivertebra among 78,500 live-born infants at a tertiary medical center in Israel. Results: There were 26 cases of hemivertebra (0.33/1,000 live-born infants): male/female ratio 1/1, Jewish/Arab ratio 10/16, and ratio of single/multiple type of hemivertebrae 17/9. Twenty-three out of 26 infants (88.5%) with hemivertebra had additional congenital anomalies (cranial, cardiac, renal, intestinal, and skeletal). Conclusions: Hemivertebra is not an infrequent finding in fetuses and live-born infants. Comprehensive ultrasonographic screening of the fetus allows early prenatal diagnosis of hemivertebra, and provides parents with helpful information for their decision regarding the fate of pregnancy.
Stochastic Differential Contraction in Nonlinear System Analysis

By adopting on a notion of stochastic differential contraction, the paper presents new results on the incremental mean squared gain (IMSG) analysis of nonlinear systems with stochastic inputs. The relative power between two stochastic processes is defined as the asymptotic average (over time) of the second moment of the point-wise distance (in some metric) between the two processes. The IMSG of a system is then defined as the relative power between two output trajectories driven by two independent instances of i.i. d. inputs with unit relative power. While contracting metrics have been previously used for analysis of nonlinear systems, the formulation and analysis method in this paper lead to new conditions that yield a more accurate upper bound on the system gain. The idea is to introduce a notion of stochastic differential contraction which does not explicitly embed an exponential rate of contraction. This approach is more suitable for analysis of systems with stochastic inputs. In particular, and unlike previous approaches, the standard H2-norm analysis results for linear systems can be recovered as a special case in this setting.
Relationship between Stock Index and National Economy In India:An Empirical Analysis

It has been accepted that developed capital markets are able to mobilize domestic savings and able to allocate funds more efficiently. Thus, stock markets can play a role in inducing economic growth in emerging market economies like India. Thus, this paper is an attempt to investigate the causal relationship between the stock index and the national economy in the context of India over the period 2006 to 2015 using the Toda-Yamamoto approach. The empirical findings provide the evidence of unidirectional causality running from real economic growth to stock market in India over the entire observation period. This finding is significant for the policy makers of the country. Plans and policies should be formulated such that the demand side factors are made influential. This would necessitate higher resource mobilization and thus, contribute to the development of stock market of the country.
The Third Worker: Assessing the Trade-Off between Employees and Contractors

Firms make labour demand decisions not only between permanent and non-permanent employees but also increasingly more between employees and contractors. Indeed, this third work format can be attractive, also when employment protection law is restrictive. This paper examines empirically this scarcely researched trade-off drawing on a recent reform in Portugal that cut the severance pay of new employee hires while leaving unchanged the regulations affecting contractors. Our analysis draws on difference-in-differences methods and original high-frequency firm-level panel data on both employees and contractors. We find that the reduction in severance pay had a large relative positive effect on the wage bills and worker counts of employees compared to contractors. This result, robust to a number of checks, highlights the role of labour regulations as an additional driver of more flexible labour formats.
Management of perforated duodenal ulcer in a resource poor environment.

BACKGROUND The majority of literature on the management of perforated duodenal ulcer comes from the west. However, this is not necessarily appropriate in the developing world where perforated ulcers occur in younger patients, there is a strong association with cigarette smoking, and presentation is often delayed. OBJECTIVE An attempt to guide management of perforated duodenal ulcer in the developing world using the best evidence available. DATA SOURCES Review of the literature on perforated ulcers and retrospective chart review of cases from a rural African hospital. STUDY SELECTION Relevant studies from the western and developing world literature. DATA EXTRACTION Med-line search. DATA SYNTHESIS Assessment of relevance to clinical management of perforated duodenal ulcers in the developing world. CONCLUSIONS Due to recognition of Helicobacter pylori (HP) as a causative agent in duodenal ulcer disease many western surgeons are questioning the need for definitive ulcer surgery in the acute management of perforated duodenal ulceration. This philosophy may not be appropriate in the developing world due to poor HP eradication rates, conditions fostering re-infection with HP, problems with patient compliance in taking medications, and difficulties with follow-up. It is suggested that selected patients, without preoperative risk factors, are offered definitive surgery but those at any risk of postoperative mortality be treated with conservative surgery and treatment for HP. These patients will have to be followed closely to check ulcer healing. Attention will also need to be paid to stopping smoking.
Discharge Characteristics of Gaseous Dielectrics

This chapter reviews studies of discharge characteristics and insulating properties of SF6 gas conducted in Japan, stressing works of the recent five to ten years. It deals with the following items. (a) computer simulation of basic processes of discharge in SF6, (b) discharge characteristics in non-uniform fields, (c) breakdown characteristics in nearly uniform fields: breakdown criterion and breakdown voltage, (d) electrode effect, (e) breakdown voltage-time characteristics, (f) characteristics of spacers: surface flashover and internal breakdown (puncture), (g) effect of conducting particles: gas gaps, surface flashover, and preventive measures, (h) electrode coating, and (i) characteristics for dc.