Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beyond the EU membership-non-membership dichotomy? Supranational identities among national EU decision-makers

This article poses the following question: Do national civil servants attending EU committees evoke supranational loyalties that transcend preestablished national and sectoral identities? Multiple institutional affiliations often trigger multiple identities. However, certain identities - like supranationalism - are fostered under particular institutional conditions. Three hypotheses on supranationalism are proposed. First, supranationalism reflects the EU membership of each nation-state. Second, intensive and sustained participation on EU committees among national civil servants leads to supranational allegiances among the participants. Finally, supranationalism is associated with the general lack of national coordination prior to EU committee meetings. The empirical analysis employs survey data of 160 Scandinavian government officials with various experience from EU committees. Additionally, forty-seven face-to-face interviews supplement the survey data. The main empirical observations are twofold. First, pre-established allegiances tend to exceed supranational identifications among national civil servants attending EU committees. Second, supranational allegiances are primarily enacted among government officials from EU member states and among officials who participate intensively in EU committees. Less empirical support is provided for the argument that supranationalism reflects the lack of ex ante national co-ordination mechanisms.
Cortical Cytochrome Oxidase Activity Is Reduced in Alzheimer's Disease

Abstract: A defect in energy metabolism may play a role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. In the present study, we examined the activities of the enzymes that catalyze oxidative phosphorylation in frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital cortex from Alzheimer's disease patients and age‐matched controls. Complex I and complex II–III activities showed a small decrease in occipital cortex, but were unaffected in the other cortical areas. The most consistent change was a significant decrease of cytochrome oxidase (complex IV) activity of 25–30% in the four cortical regions examined. These results provide further evidence of a cytochrome oxidase defect in Alzheimer's disease postmortem brain tissue. A deficiency in this key energy‐metabolizing enzyme could lead to a reduction in energy stores and thereby contribute to the neurodegenerative process.
An empirical study of high performance HRM practices in Chinese SMEs

This paper explores the performance effects of human resource management (HRM) practices in 74 Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Four high performance HRM practices are identified: performance-based pay, participatory decision-making, free market selection, and performance evaluation. Regression analysis results support the conventional idea that the adoption of HRM practices generates better HRM outcomes and, in turn, better HRM outcomes contribute positively to firm performance. However, not all HRM practices, and their effects, led to improved SME performance. Among the Chinese SMEs investigated, a high level of employee commitment was identified as being the key HRM outcome for enhancing performance.
The human PMR1 endonuclease stimulates cell motility by down regulating miR-200 family microRNAs

The motility of MCF-7 cells increases following expression of a human PMR1 transgene and the current study sought to identify the molecular basis for this phenotypic change. Ensemble and single cell analyses show increased motility is dependent on the endonuclease activity of hPMR1, and cells expressing active but not inactive hPMR1 invade extracellular matrix. Nanostring profiling identified 14 microRNAs that are downregulated by hPMR1, including all five members of the miR-200 family and others that also regulate invasive growth. miR-200 levels increase following hPMR1 knockdown, and changes in miR-200 family microRNAs were matched by corresponding changes in miR-200 targets and reporter expression. PMR1 preferentially cleaves between UG dinucleotides within a consensus YUGR element when present in the unpaired loop of a stem–loop structure. This motif is present in the apical loop of precursors to most of the downregulated microRNAs, and hPMR1 targeting of pre-miRs was confirmed by their loss following induced expression and increase following hPMR1 knockdown. Introduction of miR-200c into hPMR1-expressing cells reduced motility and miR-200 target gene expression, confirming hPMR1 acts upstream of Dicer processing. These findings identify a new role for hPMR1 in the post-transcriptional regulation of microRNAs in breast cancer cells.
Analysis of Bond, Real Estate, and Stock Market Returns in China

A broad analysis of the stock, bond, and real estate markets in China was conducted to investigate the policy effectiveness of using the lending rate to dampen China's real estate sector. Several important findings emerged: (1) as asset classes, the three markets do not exhibit similar patterns of volatility and return; (2) there are significant price transmission effects from the stock and real estate markets to the bond market and from the stock market to the real estate market; and (3) raising the lending rate is an effective tool to dampen the real estate market.
The Determinants of Grievance Initiation

The author estimates a behavioral model of grievance initiation with 1990 survey data on 1,205 work groups in Canada. The behaviors of supervisors, employees, and shop stewards—such as the degree to which supervisors emphasized productivity rather than friendly relations with employees—were significantly related to grievance rates, but the determinants of grievance rates varied across grievance issues. The results suggest, for example, that the grievances most likely to be initiated by stewards rather than employees were those involving job descriptions, and that grievances over work rules were the least likely to be settled through informal resolution. The model explains approximately 30% of the total variation in grievance rates across work groups—40% if industry dummy variables are included.
The Impact of Compulsory Competitive Tendering on Refuse Collection Services

Compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) of blue-collar services such as refuse collection and street cleaning was introduced in the UK by the Local Government Act 1988. This law, imposed by central government, obliged elected local authorities to expose specific services to competitive tendering at fixed intervals and subject to national guidelines. Whilst the issue of competitive tendering of public services has generated a substantial literature over recent years (see Domberger and Rimmer (1994) for a review), there have been relatively few studies of compulsory competitive tendering.2 This paper uses a dataset on refuse collection costs and services for the 365 English local authorities over the period 1984-94. It follows on from Szymanski and Wilkins (1993) who analysed the same database using data up until 1988
Perceptions of climate change impacts, adaptation and limits to adaption in the Australian Alps: the ski-tourism industry and key stakeholders

This paper explores perceptions of ski-tourism representatives and other regional stakeholders about climate change impacts, limits to tourism development and adaptation strategies in the Australian Alps. This area faces rising temperatures, declining rain and snow falls, and shorter skiing seasons. Open-ended interviews examined the perceptions, plans and attitudes of the ski industry and those of conservation managers, local government officials and Australian researchers into tourism and/or climate change effects in the Australian Alps. All interviewees accepted climate change was a reality; several, however, questioned the worst-case scenarios. The major tourism-related adaptation strategies were snowmaking and diversifying to year-round tourism; the success of these strategies will vary according to individual resorts’ snowmaking capacity and potential summer tourism revenue. Currently non-snow-based tourism revenue is worth only approximately 30% of winter revenue. Social resistance to increased water and electricity use for snowmaking emerged as an important issue. Competition for water, including the needs of ecosystems, agriculture and fire protection in this summer-fire-prone region, and fire management issues, is a key concern. Current conflicts between the ski industry and other stakeholders over climate change adaptation call for a collaborative adaptation and change policy within the Australian Alps.
Expected and Unexpected Residential Mobility

Abstract The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the process of residential mobility by examining the factors shaping households' mobility expectation and those prompting or deterring the execution of their mobility plan. Based on the PSID data, the results from the random effects discrete choice models reveal that household heterogeneity is significant. Also, while changes in socioeconomic circumstances may prompt a household to plan to move, the mobility plan is likely to be interrupted by unanticipated changes. However, for households who did not plan to move, unanticipated changes in socioeconomic circumstances have significant and positive effects on residential mobility.
Encouraging family engagement in the rehabilitation process: a rehabilitation provider’s development of support strategies for family members of people with traumatic brain injury

Purpose: After a moderate to severe traumatic brain injury, it is widely recommended that family members be actively engaged in the client’s rehabilitation journey because evidence suggests that this is associated with better outcomes. The ability of family members to fully engage in rehabilitation may be hindered by the barriers (logistical and psychological) they encounter. However, rehabilitation services can facilitate family engagement through a person-centred approach that provides support to remove barriers. Limited published guidance exists regarding practical and effective methods for delivering such support. This paper describes how one rehabilitation service has developed an eight-tiered approach. Key messages and implications: Family support is provided by explicit structuring of services to include (i) early engagement, (ii) meeting cultural needs, (iii) keeping families together, (iv) actively listening, (v) active involvement, (vi) education, (vii) skills training, and (viii) support for community re-integration. Implementation of these support strategies are individualised based on the expressed needs of each family. Families report a high level of satisfaction with the service. Conclusion: A practice-based quality improvement model identified challenges, implemented changes, and observed/evaluated the results to successfully develop a multifaceted strategy for supporting families, thereby encouraging their engagement in rehabilitation. Ongoing refinements and evaluation are planned. Implications for Rehabilitation Having the support and involvement of one’s family during rehabilitation after a serious traumatic brain injury can improve one’s chances of having a good outcome. Rehabilitation services can and should provide families with the support needed to enable engagement in the rehabilitation process. This paper describes the innovations that one rehabilitation service provider has established.
Instability and Information

Many complex systems exhibit extreme events far more often than expected for a normal distribution. This work examines how self-similar bursts of activity across several orders of magnitude can emerge from first principles in systems that adapt to information. Surprising connections are found between two apparently unrelated research topics: hand-eye coordination in balancing tasks and speculative trading in financial markets. Seemingly paradoxically, locally minimising fluctuations can increase a dynamical system's sensitivity to unpredictable perturbations and thereby facilitate global catastrophes. This general principle is studied in several domain-specific models and in behavioural experiments. It explains many findings in both fields and resolves an apparent antinomy: the coexistence of stabilising control or market efficiency and perpetual instabilities resembling critical phenomena in physical systems.
On the Pulsed and Transient Characterization of Organic Field-Effect Transistors

We performed pulsed measurements on organic transistors presenting four different active materials. All the devices show a strong correlation between the drain-source current and the pulse width. We attributed this phenomenon to the long time needed for channel formation and depletion. These transient effects may have a severe impact on device characterization and application development.
Poverty: A Study of Town Life

Seebohm Rowntree’s study of poverty in York in 1899 was one of the earliest and most influential pieces of empirical social science carried out in Britain. These days it is almost certainly referred to a lot more often than it is actually read. Jonathan Bradshaw begins his long and excellent preface to the Policy Press edition by admitting that he had nevermanaged to own a copy, but had inevitably referred to it repeatedly in his teaching andwriting.Many of us would have to make similar confessions. More than a century after it first appeared the question is, what does it have to say to us today? In particular, what can we learn from it that enhances our understanding of 21st-century housing problems and policies? The first thing that strikes the modern reader of Poverty is the differences between then and now, in terms of not only the way the research was carried out and the data analysed and presented, but also the social and economic context being described. Seebohm Rowntree was not a trained social scientist but the scion of a wealthy Quaker family of chocolate manufacturers in York. He was in fact trained as an industrial chemist before entering the family business in 1889. By 1897 he was on the board of directors, a position which afforded him sufficient freedom to pursue his interests in social research and public affairs. In his introduction to the first edition Rowntree explained that his aim was ‘to throw some light upon the conditions which govern the life of the wage-earning classes in provincial towns’. Among the questions he asked himself were, what was the true measure of the poverty in the city [of York], both in extent and depth? How much of it was due to insufficiency of income and how much to improvidence? In thinking about how to approach answering these questions he openly acknowledged the influence of Charles Booth, and modelled the study of poverty in York on Booth’s ongoing work in London. This led Rowntree to undertake a survey of all of the working-class households living in York in 1899, and he collected data for over 11 500 households. No-one, surely, would try to achieve such blanket coverage today. Nor would modern researchers rely on just one person to carry out the great majority of such a large number of interviews. It seems that Rowntree employed one paid interviewer, plus a team of part-time volunteers. One estimate (quoted by Bradshaw in his Preface) is that each interview must have been completed in about seven minutes! In other ways too Rowntree’s approach differed from 21st-century conceptions of best practice in this sort of study. It seems astonishing that in a study of poverty he did not collect information about incomes directly from his interviewees. Instead he relied on
Candidaemia in patients with dialysis-dependent acute renal failure: aetiology, predisposing and prognostic factors.

BACKGROUND Infections remain the major cause of death among patients with acute renal failure (ARF), especially in severe ARF necessitating dialysis therapy (ARF(d)). Although the clinical features and outcomes of candidaemia in various patient populations have been described, data concerning candidaemic episodes among patients with ARF(d) are scarce. This study investigated the aetiology, predisposing, and prognostic factors for candidaemia in the ARF(d) patient population. Three patient groups were investigated in this study. METHODS During an 8-year study period from January 1992 to December 1999, 37 candidaemic episodes that developed among 653 ARF(d) patients were assigned to ARF(d) candidaemic group, and 170 candidaemic episodes developing in patients without ARF(d) or chronic uraemia as the non-ARF(d) candidaemic group, and 28 matched ARF(d) patients without candidaemia were assigned to the ARF(d) control group. Among these groups, clinical characteristics in ARF(d) candidaemia patients, predisposing factors, and outcomes were compared. Four management strategies including central catheter removal, anti-fungal therapy, both, or neither were applied. The prognostic factors for attributable death were evaluated by univariate analysis followed by the multivariate logistic regression analysis. RESULTS The proportion of ARF(d) patients with candidaemia was significantly higher than in patients who had no ARF(d) or chronic uraemia (5.7% vs 0.15%, P<0.001). Compared with the non-ARF(d) candidaemic group, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), administration of corticosteroid, and central venous catheter-associated candidaemia were more common in the ARF(d) candidaemic group (P<0.05). In matched case-control study, multiple antibiotic usage was shown to be a predisposing factor for developing candidaemia in patients with ARF(d), and corticosteroid therapy has a marginal significance (P=0.059). The occurrence of candidaemia increased the mortality rate of ARF(d) (71% vs 39.2% in ARF(d) control group, P<0.05). By multivariate logistic analysis, the variables associated with attributable death in ARF(d) candidaemic group were identified to be an APACHE II score of >or=18, and anti-fungal therapy for >48 h. Central venous catheters were removed in 32 (86.5%) of the 37 ARF(d) candidaemic patients, among whom the 18 patients who had received anti-fungal therapy for >48 h had a lower attributable death rate than those patients who had not (27.8% vs 64.3%, P<0.05). Of the remaining five patients who did not have their catheter removed, three patients subsequently died and two patients improved only after catheter removal. CONCLUSIONS The higher prevalence of candidaemia in ARF(d) patients is due to their underlying illnesses and multiplicity of predisposing factors, rather than ARF and dialysis therapy per se. Predisposing factors include SLE, indwelling central venous catheter, multiple antibiotic usage, and corticosteroid therapy. Prompt anti-fungal therapy and catheter removal should be mandatory for ARF(d) patients with candidaemia.
On choice of technique in the Robinson-Solow-Srinivasan model

We report results on the optimal "choice of technique" in a model originally formulated by Robinson, Solow and Srinivasan. By viewing this model as a specific instance of the general theory of intertemporal resource allocation associated with Brock, Gale and McKenzie, we resolve long-standing conjectures in the form of theorems on the existence and price-support of optimal paths, and on their long-run behavior. We also examine policies, due to Stiglitz, as a cornerstone for a theory of transition dynamics in this model. We present examples to show that (i) an optimal program can be periodic, (ii) a Stiglitz' program can be bad, and (iii) a Stiglitz production program can be non-optimal. We then provide sufficient conditions under which the policies proposed by Stiglitz coincide with optimal behavior.
Dobutamine thallium-201 myocardial SPECT in patients with left bundle branch block and normal coronary arteries.

UNLABELLED Dobutamine is a positive inotropic and chronotropic agent and is being widely used as a pharmacologic stress agent in patients unable to achieve maximal dynamic exercise test. The purpose of the current study was to document the dobutamine induced false-positive septal defect in terms of its frequency and extent on 201Tl myocardial SPECT in patient with left bundle branch block (LBBB). METHODS Twenty-five symptomatic patients with LBBB underwent dobutamine and redistribution 201Tl myocardial SPECT studies. Coronary angiographies were also performed. Only those patients with normal coronaries (n = 19) were included in the study. For each study, tomograms were divided into 19 segments, and each segment was analyzed qualitatively as to presence and type of perfusion defect (reversible or fixed). In addition, septal perfusion was scored in each patient (1 = markedly, 2 = moderately reduced, 3 = normal uptake). RESULTS Sixteen of 19 patients (84.21%) had false-positive septal reversible perfusion defect, and the remaining 3 had normal images. Perfusion defects were confined to only the septum in 5 of 16 patients (31.25%), whereas a greater proportion of patients had septal defect extending to the contiguous myocardial areas, mainly to the anterior wall. Five of 16 patients with false-positive defects had a septal perfusion score of 1, while the remaining 11 had a score of 2. CONCLUSION Dobutamine myocardial scintigraphy in patients with LBBB was misleading for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease, since up to 84.21% of patients had false-positive septal perfusion defects.
Potential for comparative public opinion research in public administration

Public administration and public services have always taken a marginal place in political scientists’ behavioural research. Public administration students, in contrast, tend to focus on political and administrative elites and institutions and have largely ignored citizens in comparative research. In this article, we make a plea for international comparative research on citizens’ attitudes towards public administration from an interdisciplinary perspective. Available international survey material is discussed and main trends in empirical practice and theoretical approaches are outlined, especially those with a potential impact on public sector reform.
Regional brain morphometry in patients with traumatic brain injury based on acute- and chronic-phase magnetic resonance imaging

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is caused by a sudden external force and can be very heterogeneous in its manifestation. In this work, we analyse T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) brain images that were prospectively acquired from patients who sustained mild to severe TBI. We investigate the potential of a recently proposed automatic segmentation method to support the outcome prediction of TBI. Specifically, we extract meaningful cross-sectional and longitudinal measurements from acute- and chronic-phase MR images. We calculate regional volume and asymmetry features at the acute/subacute stage of the injury (median: 19 days after injury), to predict the disability outcome of 67 patients at the chronic disease stage (median: 229 days after injury). Our results indicate that small structural volumes in the acute stage (e.g. of the hippocampus, accumbens, amygdala) can be strong predictors for unfavourable disease outcome. Further, group differences in atrophy are investigated. We find that patients with unfavourable outcome show increased atrophy. Among patients with severe disability outcome we observed a significantly higher mean reduction of cerebral white matter (3.1%) as compared to patients with low disability outcome (0.7%).