Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Game Meat Consumption Feeds Urban Support of Traditional Use of Natural Resources

Continuous urbanization and associated political influences of urbanites on rural activities stress a need for understanding urban attitudes toward use of natural resources. Our objective was to compare urban and rural residents' attitudes toward hunting, a culturally important rural activity that also is a key wildlife management technique throughout the world to control wildlife populations. Our mail survey (n = 6,818) revealed fewer nonhunters in the urban region of Stockholm (48%) expressed positive attitudes toward hunting than nonhunters in the predominantly rural northern Sweden (70%). Path analyses indicated that experiences with hunting or hunters, and especially consumption of game meat (Stockholm β = 0.25; northern Sweden β = 0.26), were associated with positive attitudes. Our results imply that finding ways to increase the distribution of game meat and associated social interactions to urban nonhunters will help maintain or increase support for hunting and enhance wildlife management.
It's not an exact science: teaching entrepreneurship in Northern Ireland

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the approach to embedding entrepreneurship within third level education in Northern Ireland by assessing the perceptions of lecturers and learners and monitoring the effectiveness of teaching methods.Design/methodology/approach – Surveys and focus groups were conducted with lecturers and learners from different disciplines as part of a pilot investigation under the Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship (NICENT) with a view to establishing a longitudinal study.Findings – Evidence suggests that NICENT has increased interest and positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship in Northern Ireland. E‐learning can meet high demand, intensive programmes are equally effective in improving the skills set. Entrepreneurship education needs sub‐sequential support.Research limitations/implications – The study provided preliminary findings for entrepreneurship teachings in different disciplines. Further dissecting of lecturer/learner analyses by course/year etc. is .
Panel estimates of the earnings gap in Norway: do female immigrants experience a double earnings penalty?

This study explores the possibility that being both a ‘female’ and an ‘immigrant’ will impose an earnings disadvantage on immigrant women in Norway. Well-known techniques are used to decompose the earnings gap between Norwegian men and immigrant women into portions attributable to productivity differentials, portions attributable to a gender effect, and portions attributable to an ethnic effect. The analysis supports the following conclusions: First, there is evidence of a double negative effect on female immigrant earnings. Second, gender effect is more important than ethnic effect. Finally, the discrimination estimates are robust to the alternative methods used in decomposing Norwegian men-immigrant women earnings gap.
An Empirical Examination of Stakeholder Groups as Monitoring Sources in Corporate Governance

Insurers are formally and informally monitored by a variety of stakeholders, including reinsurers, agents, outside board members, and regulators. While other studies have generally examined these stakeholders separately, they have not accounted for the fact that there is some relation among the stakeholder groups, and the presence of these groups is likely to be jointly determined. By empirically controlling for these potential interrelations, we create a more complete assessment of the impact of these stakeholders/monitors on insurers’ risk taking. Specifically, we find that the presence of some stakeholders offsets the degree or presence of others, and that most stakeholders/monitors are associated with a reduction of overall firm risk.
Role of Pore Size Location in Determining Bacterial Activity during Predation by Protozoa in Soil

The predation of a luminescence-marked strain of Pseudomonas fluorescens by the soil ciliate Colpoda steinii was studied in soil microcosms. Bacterial cells were introduced in either small (neck diameter, <6 (mu)m) or intermediate-sized (neck diameter, 6 to 30 (mu)m) pores in the soil by inoculation at appropriate matric potentials, and ciliates were introduced into large pores (neck diameter, 30 to 60 (mu)m). Viable cell concentrations of bacteria introduced into intermediate-sized pores decreased at a greater rate than those in small pores, with reductions in bacterial populations being accompanied by an increase in viable cell numbers of the ciliate. The data indicate that the location of bacteria in small pores provides significant protection from predation. In the absence of C. steinii, the level of metabolic activity of the bacterial population, measured by luminometry, decreased at a greater rate than cell number, and the level of luminescence cell(sup-1) consequently decreased. The decrease in levels of luminescence indicates a loss of activity due to starvation. During predation by C. steinii, the level of the activity of cells introduced into small pores fell in a similar manner. The level of cell activity was, however, significantly greater for cells introduced into intermediate-sized pores, despite their greater susceptibility to predation. The data suggest that increased activity arises from a release of nutrients by the predator and the greater accessibility of bacteria to nutrients in larger pores. Nutrient amendment of microcosms resulted in increases in bacterial populations to sustained, higher levels, while levels of luminescence increased transiently. The predation of cells introduced into intermediate-sized pores was greater, and there was also evidence that the level of activity of surviving bacteria was greater for bacteria in intermediate-sized but not small pores.
Risk and Return Reaction of the Stock Market to Public Announcements about Fundamentals: Theory and Evidence

The paper analyzes how the stock market reacts to news about fundamentals. Specifically, we analyze how the stock market reacts to scheduled public macroeconomic announcements that reveal information about the state of the economy. Recently, among other studies, Boyd, Hu, and Jagannathan (2005) find that the stock market reacts negatively to positive news about the state of the economy. In this paper, we provide a theoretical explanation for recent empirical findings about the effect of news on the stock market. We develop a dynamic general equilibrium asset pricing model where investors learn about the unobserved state of the economy through dividend realizations and periodic public announcements. In this framework, we find that returns react significantly on announcement days only if there is a significant change in investors’ beliefs due to the announcement. Furthermore, positive unanticipated news about the state of the economy decreases the stock market return on announcement days if investors are more risk averse than log utility. The stock market reacts asymmetrically to unanticipated news. In other words, the effect of a positive unanticipated news is stronger than the effect of a negative unanticipated news of the same magnitude. On the other hand, the conditional volatility of returns reacts to the resolution of uncertainty on announcement days. The higher the degree of uncertainty resolved on the announcement day, the smaller the conditional volatility will be. We claim that the resolution of uncertainty about the state of the economy is the main theoretical link between news about fundamentals and the behavior of conditional volatility on announcement days. Additionally, we find that the information revealed on announcement days is incorporated into the stock price in a single period. Using real-time data, we develop model-based and survey-based measures of unanticipated news and uncertainty to test the implications of our model. We find supporting evidence for our theoretical model in the aggregate stock market data.
Civic Virtue and Labor Market Institutions

We argue civic virtue plays a key role in explaining the design of public insurance against unemployment risks by solving moral hazard issues which hinder the efficiency of unemployment insurance. We show, in a simple model, that economies with stronger civic virtues are more prone to provide insurance through unemployment benefits rather than through job protection. We provide cross-country empirical evidence of a strong correlation between civic attitudes and the design of unemployment benefits and employment protection in OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2003. We then use an epidemiological approach to estimate the existence of a potential causal relationship from inherited civic virtue to labor market insurance institutions.
Medical Prophylaxis following Hospitalization for Ischemic Stroke: Age- and Sex-Related Differences and Relation to Mortality

Background: The extent and implications of age- and sex-related differences in prophylaxis following ischemic stroke are unknown. We examined differences in the use of medical prophylaxis across age and sex groups in stroke patients after hospital discharge in Denmark and estimated the possible impact on age- and sex-related differences in mortality. Methods: A nationwide population-based follow-up study was conducted involving 28,634 patients hospitalized for ischemic stroke in 2003–2006 who survived 30 days after discharge. The proportion of patients who filled prescriptions for cardiovascular drugs within 0–6 and 12–18 months after discharge was determined. Mortality rates were compared across age and sex groups with and without controlling for use of medical prophylaxis. Results: Increasing age was associated with lower prophylaxis. Adjusted odds ratios for the use of a combination of a platelet inhibitor, an antihypertensive and a statin were 0.45 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.38–0.54] and 0.52 (95% CI: 0.43–0.62) for men and women >80 years, respectively, compared with men ≤65 years. No systematic sex-related differences were identified. Continued drug use ranged from 66.1 to 91.9% for different drugs 12–18 months after discharge, with the lowest rate of continued use found among patients >80 years. Controlling for use of medical prophylaxis was associated with lower mortality rate ratios for elderly compared with younger patients. Conclusions: Continuous efforts are warranted to ensure implementation of evidence-based secondary prophylaxis among elderly patients with ischemic stroke.
Environmental Action, Gender Equity and Women's Participation

For poor households, and especially for the women who own little private land, forests and village commons have always been critical sources of basic necessities in rural India. However, the availability of these resources has been declining rapidly, due both to degradation and to shifts in property rights away from community control and management to State and individual control and management. More recently, though, we are seeing small but notable reversals in these processes toward a re-establishment of greater community control over forests and village commons. Numerous forest management groups have emerged, initiated variously by the State, by village communities, or by non-governmental organizations. However, unlike the old systems of communal property management which recognized the usufruct rights of all villagers, the new ones represent a more formalized system of rights based on membership. In other words, under the new initiatives, membership is replacing citizenship as the defining criterion for establishing rights in the commons. This raises critical questions about participation and equity, especially gender equity. Are the benefits and costs of the emergent institutional arrangements being shared equally by women and men? Or are they creating a system of property rights in communal land which, like existing rights in privatized land, are strongly male centred? What is women's participation in these initiatives? What constrains or facilitates their participation and exercise of agency? This article provides pointers. It also demonstrates the relevance of the feminist environmentalist perspective, as opposed to the ecofeminist perspective, in understanding gendered responses to the environmental crisis.
Convergence and performance analysis of the normalized LMS algorithm with uncorrelated Gaussian data

It is demonstrated that the normalized least mean square (NLMS) algorithm can be viewed as a modification of the widely used LMS algorithm. The NLMS is shown to have an important advantage over the LMS, which is that its convergence is independent of environmental changes. In addition, the authors present a comprehensive study of the first and second-order behavior in the NLMS algorithm. They show that the NLMS algorithm exhibits significant improvement over the LMS algorithm in convergence rate, while its steady-state performance is considerably worse. >
Consociationalism and the Evolution of Political Cleavages in Northern Ireland, 1989–2004

Political cleavages are often understood as deriving from either deep-rooted social divisions or institutional incentives. Contemporary Northern Ireland provides a test of the mutability of apparently entrenched cleavages to institutional change. Research undertaken before the ceasefire in the 1990s found noticeable asymmetries in the patterns of cleavage within the unionist and nationalist blocs. Within the unionist bloc, economic ‘left–right’ issues formed the main ideological division between the two major unionist parties. This contrasted with an ethno-national source of ideological division between the two nationalist parties. However, the emergence of a consociational form of government structure since then has demonstrated the ability of institutional incentives to reform some aspects of party competition swiftly. As evidence of this, we show that between 1989 and 2004 there was little change in the sources of support for Sinn Féin relative to the SDLP, but the influence of left–right ideology within the unionist bloc was negated as the influence of ethno-nationalism dramatically increased.
Abnormal Audit Fees and Restatements

SUMMARY: We investigate the relationship between audit fees and subsequent financial statement restatements in the years following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). After controlling for internal control quality, we find that abnormal audit fees are negatively associated with the likelihood that financial statements are subsequently restated. This result conflicts with prior work that finds that audit fees are positively associated with future restatements. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the notion that restatements reflect low audit effort or underestimated audit risk in the periods leading up to the restatement year.
Banking in transition economies: does efficiency require instability?

Efficient banks are essential for capitalist economies, yet bank failures result in costly externalities, leading to a potential conflict between the risk choices of private agents that own banks and socially optimal choices. This conflict is particularly severe in transition economies. Evidence suggests that these economies have banking systems which are both prone to failure and inefficiently small; established banks suffer from an overhang of bad loans, and implicit subsidies often favor continued lending to inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs). If a regulator seeks to impose higher capital standards to reduce the odds of bank failure, privately-held banks may instead exit the industry, shrinking a system that is already inefficiently small. If loans to SOEs are subsidized so as to mitigate repercussions from their failure to workers and to banks, established banks may prefer such loans over riskier unsubsidized loans to entrepreneurial firms. Encouraging entry into banking may mitigate this problem, but the new banks will be quite risky and prone to failure. The upshot is that, in transition economies, achieving an efficient banking system is likely to require significant instability.
Experimental Adaptation of an RNA Virus Mimics Natural Evolution

ABSTRACT Identification of virulence determinants of viruses is of critical importance in virology. In search of such determinants, virologists traditionally utilize comparative genomics between a virulent and an avirulent virus strain and construct chimeras to map their locations. Subsequent comparison reveals sequence differences, and through analyses of site-directed mutants, key residues are identified. In the absence of a naturally occurring virulent strain, an avirulent strain can be functionally converted to a virulent variant via an experimental evolutionary approach. However, the concern remains whether experimentally evolved virulence determinants mimic those that have evolved naturally. To provide a direct comparison, we exploited a plant RNA virus, soybean mosaic virus (SMV), and its natural host, soybean. Through a serial in vivo passage experiment, the molecularly cloned genome of an avirulent SMV strain was converted to virulent variants on functionally immune soybean genotypes harboring resistance factor(s) from the complex Rsv1 locus. Several of the experimentally evolved virulence determinants were identical to those discovered through a comparative genomic approach with a naturally evolved virulent strain. Thus, our observations validate an experimental evolutionary approach to identify relevant virulence determinants of an RNA virus.
Citizens' Representations of China's Golden Weeks

For over a decade Chinese tourism policy has constrained the holiday periods for its citizens to a limited number of well-defined Golden Weeks. This study explores the representations of 450 Chinese residents from five popular tourist regions in these holiday periods. The study is embedded in the framework of social representations theory underpinned by an emic approach to this topical issue. More specifically, the researchers employed an open-ended survey in Mandarin, eliciting the perceived advantages and disadvantages of the structured holiday periods. Many positive features of each individual Golden Week were identified, while some problems resulting from congestion were also highlighted. A common and hegemonic social representation was revealed and presented using the treemaps approach. A range of key managerial interventions are required for improving the periods as travel opportunities both within and outside China.
Urinary Sediment Podocalyxin in Children with Glomerular Diseases

Background: In an immunofluorescence study using antibody to podocalyxin, we reported that urinary excretion of podocytes reflected podocyte injury in glomeruli. However, this method has some problems, since it is basically urine cytology. To overcome problems with this test, we measured whole podocalyxin content in urine sediment by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Methods: Urinary sediment podocalyxin (u-sed-PCX) content of the first morning urine was quantified by ELISA after solubilization by detergent. We measured urine samples from children with various glomerular diseases and from healthy volunteers as controls. The glomerular diseases were classified into two categories: group I (inflammatory glomerular, 5 diseases) and group II (non-inflammatory glomerular, 3 diseases). Results: (1) The level of u-sed-PCX was significantly higher in the urine from patients with glomerular diseases (groups I and II, median (interquartile range (IQR)): 2 (0.6–18.5), n = 111) compared with controls (0 (0–0.4), n = 135), and the level of u-sed-PCX in group I diseases (3.4 (0.6–27.2), n = 90) was significantly higher than those in group II diseases (0.9 (0.1–2.5), n = 21). (2) The presence of PCX in urine sediment was confirmed by Western blot analysis. (3) The degree of proteinuria was significantly correlated with the level of u-sed-PCX in group I (rs = 0.539, p < 0.001), but not in group II. (4) In group I, the level of u-sed-PCX was significantly higher in the acute phase than in the chronic phase (p < 0.01). (5) Comparison of histological findings of renal biopsies with u-sed-PCX showed a significant correlation in acute extracapillary lesions (p < 0.05). (6) Persistent high level of u-sed-PCX paralleled good histological progression in renal biopsies. Conclusion: Quantification of urinary sediment podocalyxin by ELISA is a reliable and useful laboratory marker for the estimation of the severity of active glomerular injury and a urinary index of acute extracapillary changes.
Relation between vacA subtypes, cytotoxin activity, and disease in Helicobacter pylori-infected patients from the netherlands

ObjectiveThe vacuolating cytotoxin of Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is encoded by vacA, of which allelic variation has been described. In the U.S., H. pylori strains with the signal sequence allele s1a are associated with enhanced gastric inflammation and with peptic ulcer disease (PUD). The m1 middle region allele is linked with more severe gastric epithelial damage. However, the distribution of H. pylori genotypes and the association with disease may be different in other geographical areas. The aim of this study was to establish whether vacA types among H. pylori isolates from Dutch patients are associated with disease.MethodsThe cytotoxin activity of the H. pylori isolates from 34 PUD patients and 46 patients with functional dyspepsia (FD) was assessed by an in vitro assay using HeLa cells as indicator cells. The vacA types and cagA status of the isolates were assessed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). ResultsvacA s1-type H. pylori displayed cytotoxin activity more frequently than s2 vacA-type H. pylori (p= 0.003). This difference was not significant when only cagA+H. pylori were considered. H. pylori isolates with the m1 vacA type exhibited a higher cytotoxin activity, independent of cagA (p= 0.006). Ninety-four percent (32/34) of the PUD patients and 74% (34/46) of the FD patients were infected with s1 vacA-type H. pylori (p= 0.04). When only cagA+H. pylori were considered, s1 vacA type was not associated with disease. In addition, neither the s1a nor s1b subtypes correlated with disease.ConclusionsAn association between vacA subtypes and disease could not be established in this patient population, due to the strong linkage between vacA s1 type and cagA.
Examination of young children with Lea symbols

Aims: In order to establish normal values and interocular differences of visual acuity, Lea symbols were applied to neurologically and ophthalmologically normal children. Methods: 385 children (21–93 months old) were examined, within a routine check up in an urban paediatric practice where Lea symbol acuity (LS) was measured. Of these children, 90 were re-examined in hospital comparing Lea symbol acuity (LS) and Landolt C acuity (LC). Strabismus, ametropia, and any organic eye disease were excluded. Results: In the paediatric practice, LS could be measured on both eyes in 54% of the children. In the age group above 36 and 48 months the success rate was 76% and 95%, respectively. Acuity in the paediatric practice ranged from 0.1 to 2.0 (median 1.25) in the whole group. Interocular acuity difference was one line or less in 80%. In the hospital, LS and LC could be measured on both eyes of 77% and 48% of the 90 children, respectively. Cooperation increased with age. LS in the hospital ranged from 0.32 to 2.0 (median 1.0) and LC from 0.16 to 1.25 (median 0.8). Interocular difference of LS acuity was one line or less in 90%. Conclusion: Lea symbols were found to be useful for visual acuity assessment in early childhood. Significant variability of visual acuity in this age group is caused by cooperation. When monocular measurements are possible on both eyes, however, the intraindividual interocular difference of visual acuity usually does not exceed one line.