Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intermediate Inputs and the Export Gravity Equation

This paper introduces imports in intermediate inputs into a standard heterogeneous firms model of trade with asymmetric countries. The model highlights how imports from a specific country affects a firm's decision to export to that country (the extensive margin), as well as its export value (the intensive margin). The model shows that the effect of both distance and market size on the export margins is magnified when imports in intermediates are accounted for. Indeed, to the extent that exporting firms also use foreign intermediate inputs, the impact of traditional gravity forces on exports also depends on import activities. Exploiting data on product-destination level transactions of a large panel of Italian firms, the paper provides empirical evidence in support of the predictions of the model. Controlling for firm-level time-varying unobserved heterogeneity and for the potential endogeneity of firm-level import decisions, the empirical analyses confirm that the estimated elasticities of exports to distance and market size depend on firms' importing activities.
Employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction: testing the service-profit chain in a Chinese securities firm

With the rising share of the service sector in the global economy, best practices in production, human resource management (HRM) and marketing are copied from manufacturing and applied to service industries. As the production and marketing of services involve human interaction between producer and consumer, the question is relevant to what extent the marketing function intersects with production and HRM functions. A particular strand of research deals with the relationship between employee versus customer satisfaction. If the two are found to be mutually reinforcing, then company policies should take that fact into consideration. Motivation of staff hinges on a joint effort of production, HRM and marketing managers. And in reverse, staff motivation is a key element in successful marketing. The empirical study of a leading Chinese securities firm on which this article is based, tests the relationship between employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and their joint impact on profitability. The findings indicate that employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction are positive correlated, and both of them have a positive impact on profitability. Satisfied employees deliver the service customers desire for the company and remain loyal to the company, which results in a higher return on employee investment. Customer satisfaction and increased profitability can be achieved by managing the quality of employees and by improving employee satisfaction. Since customer satisfaction feeds back into employee satisfaction, a lasting competitive advantage has been created.
Lymphovascular Invasion is a Significant Prognostic Marker of Distant Metastasis in Breast Carcinoma.

Lymphovascular invasion (LVI) is not incorporated in most staging systems although assessment of LVI is now part of the minimum data set for breast carcinoma pathology reporting. This study investigates the correlation between LVI with clinical staging, grading and prediction of patients’ survival in patients with invasive breast carcinoma. This was a retrospective study using data obtained from reviewing archival histological material and patients’ medical records at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Sabah, Malaysia. Breast carcinoma samples from 117 female patients at all stages of disease were included in this study. Correlation was performed between LVI and staging, grading, lymph node (LN) status and patient’s clinical outcome after five years of diagnoses. LVI showed significant correlation with LN involvement and distant metastasis but no significant correlation between LVI and grading. LVI correlates with clinical staging and is a reliable predictor of outcome in patients with invasive breast carcinoma.
PAR2 promotes M1 macrophage polarization and inflammation via FOXO1 pathway

Macrophages polarization plays essential but different roles in most diseases such as atherosclerosis, adipose tissue inflammation, and insulin resistance. Our previous study revealed that protease‐activated receptor 2 (PAR2), a G‐protein coupled receptor influenced macrophage function, but little is known regarding the regulation of macrophage polarization process and its potential mechanisms. In the present study, bone marrow–derived macrophages (BMDM) isolated from C57/BL6 mice and cultured with L929‐conditional medium and murine macrophage cell line RAW264.7 were used to study the function of PAR2 activation in vitro. BMDM was stimulated by the small molecular PAR2 agonist, 2‐furoyl‐LIGRLO‐amide trifluoroacetate salt, followed by transcription factor microarray to screen the significantly activated signaling pathways under PAR2 activation. Western blot analysis, quantitative real‐time polymerase chain reaction (qRT‐PCR) was used to evaluate the expression of targeted genes and transcription factors. Immunofluorescence was used to observe the subcellular distribution of transcription factors. Our results demonstrated that M1‐like polarization was presented by PAR2 agonist treatment with significant upregulation of interleukin‐1β, interleukin‐6, monocyte chemotactic protein‐1, and tumor necrosis factor‐α in BMDM and RAW264.7. Microarray identified forkhead box protein O1 (FOXO1) was significantly increased under PAR2 agonist stimulation, which was confirmed by qPCR and Western blot analysis. Immunofluorescence demonstrated that increased FOXO1 accumulated in the nucleus, which is necessary to promote transcription for targeted genes. We further knocked down FOXO1 expression using small interfering RNA, which alleviated PAR2‐induced proinflammatory gene expression. The PAR2/FOXO1 pathway mediated stimulation of proinflammatory genes was further confirmed by tryptase, an endogenous ligand of PAR2. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that PAR2 activation–induced M1 polarization and inflammation through the FOXO1‐dependent pathway.
Simulation of the Indian summer monsoon onset-phase rainfall using a regional model

Abstract. This study examines the ability of the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) regional model to simulate Indian summer monsoon (ISM) rainfall climatology in different climate zones during the monsoon onset phase in the decade 2000–2009. The initial and boundary conditions for ARW are provided from the NCEP/NCAR Reanalysis Project (NNRP) global reanalysis. Seasonal onset-phase rainfall is compared with corresponding values from 0.25° IMD (India Meteorological Department) rainfall and NNRP precipitation data over seven climate zones (perhumid, humid, dry/moist, subhumid, dry/moist, semiarid and arid) of India to see whether dynamical downscaling using a regional model yields advantages over just using large-scale model predictions. Results show that the model could simulate the onset phase in terms of progression and distribution of rainfall in most zones (except over the northeast) with good correlations and low error metrics. The observed mean onset dates and their variability over different zones are well reproduced by the regional model over most climate zones. It has been found that the ARW performed similarly to the reanalysis in most zones and improves the onset time by 1 to 3 days in zones 4 and 7, in which the NNRP shows a delayed onset compared to the actual IMD onset times. The variations in the onset-phase rainfall during the below-normal onset (June negative) and above-normal onset (June positive) phases are well simulated. The slight underestimation of onset-phase rainfall in the northeast zone could be due to failure in resolving the wide extent of topographic variations and the associated multiscale interactions in that zone. Spatial comparisons showed improvement of pentad rainfall in both space and quantity in ARW simulations over NNRP data, as evident from a wider eastward distribution of pentad rainfall over the Western Ghats, central and eastern India, as in IMD observations. While NNRP under-represented the high pentad rainfall over northeast, east and west coast areas, the ARW captured these regional features showing improvement upon NNRP reanalysis, which may be due to the high resolution (30 km) employed. The onset-phase rainfall characteristics during the contrasting ISM of 2003 and 2009 are well simulated in terms of the variations in the strength of low-level jet (LLJ) and outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR).
Combining spatial modelling and radar to identify and protect avian migratory hot-spots

Migrating landbirds are known to follow coast lines and concentrate on peninsulas prior to crossing water bodies, es- pecially during daylight but also at night, creating enhanced potential collision hazards with man-made objects. Knowing where these avian migration "hot-spots" occur in time and space is vital to improve flight safety and inform the spatial planning process (e.g. environmental assessments for offshore windfarms). We developed a simple spatial model to identify avian migration hot- spots in coastal areas based on prevailing migration orientation and coastline features known, from visual and radar observations, to concentrate migrating landbirds around land masses. Regional scale model validation was achieved by combining nocturnal passerine movement data gathered from two tier radar coverage (long-range dual-polarization Doppler weather radar and short- range marine surveillance radar) and standardised bird ringing. Applied on a national scale, the model correctly identified the ten most important Danish coastal hot-spots for spring migrants and predicted the relative numbers of birds that concentrated at each site. These bird numbers corresponded well with historical observational data. Here, we provide a potential framework for the es- tablishment of the first three-dimensional avian airspace sanctuaries, which could contribute to more effective conservation of long-distance migratory birds (Current Zoology 60 (5): 680-691, 2014).
Effect of 17-Β Estradiol Supplementation on Reversion of Diabetic Renal Fibrosis

AIM: to examine the effects of estradiol supplementation on the attenuation and reversion of renal structural changes once they have been initiated by the diabetic milieu. METHODS: Albino rats were randomly divided into two groups: Normal control and diabetic groups. The diabetic group was subdivided into 3 subgroups: 8-week diabetic group (D8), 16-week diabetic group (D16) and diabetic/estradiol treated group (D/E). Blood glucose, estradiol level, body weight, kidney weight and fractional kidney weight were measured at the time of scarification. Kidney sections were stained with heamatoxylin and eosin and Sirius red stains. Renal expression of vimentin was determined by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: There was significant increase in blood glucose level in all diabetic groups with no significant difference between them. Plasma estradiol level was significantly decreased in the diabetic groups. Estradiol supplementation restored the plasma estradiol level to sub-physiological level and significantly attenuated the decrease in the body weight and the increase in fractional kidney weight. Furthermore, estradiol markedly decreased the structural kidney changes caused by diabetes and inhibited the increase in the amount of collagen fibers as evidenced by the decrease in the glomerulosclerosis and tubulo-interstitial fibrosis indices. Estradiol also attenuated the expression of vimentin. Estradiol had the ability to reverse the kidney as evidenced by the significant decrease in the glomerulosclerosis index as compared with that of the 8-week diabetic group. CONCLUSION: Estradiol supplementation can reverse the structural changes caused by diabetes after it has been initiated. It can prevent and reverse the renal fibrosis.
The prevalence of drug-drug interactions and polypharmacy among elderly patients in Jordan

Background: The number of people aged 60 or older is estimated to be 5.6% among Jordanian population, those elderly people need special medical care; since they have a greater prevalence of chronic diseases and therefore subjected to higher prevalence of polypharmacy and potential drug-drug interaction (pDDI). There is no data about polypharmacy and pDDI in elderly patients among the Jordanian population. Methods: Prescriptions for patients aged 60 or older were examined and those patients were interviewed in several community pharmacies and hospitals’ outpatient pharmacies. The interviews covered factors that may affect the possibility of pDDI and polypharmacy including patient’s education level, number of doctors the patient see, number of drugs the patient take, does the patient live alone and does the patient take the medication by himself. Results: 367 (51.5% male and 48.5% female) patients were interviewed and their prescriptions examined. The data showed that 334 (91%) had at least one pDDI of those 67 (18.3%) had a major pDDI and 281 (76.6%) had at least one moderate pDDI. Polypharmacy was found in 275 (74.9%) of the participants. Factors that were associated with incidence of major pDDI included polypharmacy, taking Alimentary tract and metabolism drugs or drugs acting on blood and blood forming organ, and patient taking medication by him/herself. Several factors were associated with moderate pDDI including seeing a general practitioner, while polypharmacy was associated with education level and number of diseases. Conclusion: High incidence of major and moderate pDDI and polypharmacy was found. This study emphasizes the need for a better control over elderly prescription in Jordan.
How are Snap Benefits Spent? Evidence from a Retail Panel

We use a novel retail panel with detailed transaction records to study the effect of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on household spending. We use administrative data to motivate three approaches to causal inference. The marginal propensity to consume SNAP-eligible food (MPCF) out of SNAP benefits is 0.5 to 0.6. The MPCF out of cash is much smaller. These patterns obtain even for households for whom SNAP benefits are economically equivalent to cash because their benefits are below their food spending. Using a semiparametric framework, we reject the hypothesis that households respect the fungibility of money. A model with mental accounting can match the facts. (JEL D12, H75, I12, I18, I38)
How to achieve and sustain fiscal discipline in Turkey: Rising Taxes, reducing government spending or a combination of both?

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between tax revenue and government spending in order to make some policy suggestions on how to achieve fiscal discipline in Turkey. We have used the cointegrated vector autoregression (VAR) method along with the Granger causality test (1969). The empirical findings indicate that there is a uni-directional causality running from spending to tax revenue. In other words, our findings support the spend-and-tax hypothesis for fiscal discipline in Turkey over the period of 1975-2011. Since there is a uni-directional causality, running from government spending to tax revenue, spending restrictions are required to reduce budget deficits, and reducing government spending is a better solution than increasing tax revenue to obtain optimal fiscal discipline in Turkey.
Personality differences of applicants for the gun license (proprioceptive and verbal tests)

The Proprioceptive Diagnosis of Temperament and Character (DP-TC) test (Tous, 2008), which assesses fine motor performance without vision of one's own body, was used together with a verbal personality test (Duran, Garcia, Garcia, & Martinez, 2001) to examine personality differ- ences between a group of gun licence (GL) applicants and a group from the general population (GP). MANOVA results showed significant differences between the groups on the DP-TC test, with the GL group scoring higher on Emotionality (Tem- perament) and Impulsivity (Temperament and Character) and lower on Decision-Making (Temperament and Character) and Mood (Tempera- ment). In the GL group, fine motor performance on the DP-TC test was compared with the verbal test results by means of a principal components analysis with varimax rotation. The results corresponding to the Tempera- ment dimensions of the DP-TC test showed only one association with the verbal test variables, thus corroborating the notion that Temperament has little social influence. Comparison of the proprioceptive and verbal tests showed that the results on the Emotionality scale of the DP-TC were con- sistent with those on the Ego-strength scale of the verbal personality test, but not with Neuroticism; this suggests that these subjects might fake their replies in order to obtain the gun licence.
The Interpersonal Toxicity of Excessive Reassurance-Seeking: Evidence From a Longitudinal Study of Romantic Relationships

Interpersonal rejection is associated with a number of marked negative psychological sequelae, including the development of depression. Interpersonal theories (e.g., Coyne, 1976) propose that excessive reassurance-seeking (ERS) may be particularly linked to rejection, but this hypothesis has yet to be tested using an objective, behavioral indicator of interpersonal rejection. Using a sample of 118 women and their romantic partners, we examined whether women's baseline ERS was associated with partner-initiated break-ups over a 1-year follow-up period. Secondarily, we explored whether this effect was moderated by the reassurance-seeker's initial depressive symptoms. Results revealed that ERS was associated with a more rapid time to partner rejection, but not to general relationship dissolutions. Further, the effect of ERS was not moderated by women's dysphoria at baseline. These results suggest that ERS is interpersonally toxic in and of itself, and may thus be an important behavioral marker of risk for dep.
Motivation and Consequences of Lying. A Qualitative Analysis of Everyday Lying

This article presents findings of qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with a group of "frequent liars" and another of "rare liars" who provided their subjective perspectives on the phenomenon of lying. Participants in this study previously had maintained a diary of their social interactions and lies over the course of one week, which allowed to assign them to one of the two groups: frequent or rare liars. Thematic analysis of the material followed by elements of theory formulation resulted in an extended lying typology that includes not only the target of the lie (the liar vs. other) but also the motivation (protection vs. bringing benefits). We offer an analysis of what prevents from telling the truth, i.e. penalties, relationship losses, distress of the lied-to, and anticipated lack of criticism for telling the truth. We also focus on understanding moderatorsof consequences of lying (significance of the area of life, the type of lie and capacity to understand the liar) that can be useful in future studies. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs1503318
Indexing Executive Compensation Contracts

We analyze the efficiency of indexing executive pay by calibrating the standard compensation model to a large sample of U.S. CEOs. The benefits from indexing the strike price of options are small, and fully indexing all options would increase compensation costs by 50% for most firms. Indexing has several effects with overall ambiguous outcome; the quantitatively most important effect is to reduce incentives, because indexed options pay off when CEOs' marginal utility is low. The results also hold if CEOs can extract rents and extend to the case of indexing shares. Our findings may justify the common practice of "pay-for-luck. " The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com. , Oxford University Press.
Effect of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi on the Tolerance to Sodium Chloride Levels, and on Growth and Yield of Lentil ( Lens culinaris )

A pot experiment was carried out in the nethouse of Soil Science Division, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Joydebpur, Gazipur during 2014-2015 through 2015-2016. The design of the experiment was factorial randomized completely block design with 4 replications. The objectives of the study were to evaluate the potential of Arbuscular mycorrhization (AM) on the germination, yield and yield attributes of lentil treated with different concentration of sodium chloride (NaCl). Five NaCl treatments (0, 1, 2, 3 and 4%) possessed NaCl level as the first factor that were treated with soils before sowing of lentil seeds overriding or pivotal pulse crop in Bangladesh. The second factor consists of mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal treatments. Mycorrhizal plants showed better performance in terms of germination %, yield and yield contributing characters than non-mycorrhizal plants. With increasing NaCl concentration germination %, yield and yield contributing characters in the rhizosphere soil, decreased significantly (p<0.01). Interaction effects of mycorrhizal inoculation and NaCl on germination %, growth and yield of lentil were appeared to be statistically non-significant. The highest germination (96.25% in 2014-2015 and 92.50% in 2015-2016), seed yield (6.45 g pot -1 in 2014-2015 and 5.89 g pot -1 in 2015-2016), and stover yield (9.55 g pot -1 in 2014-2015 and 8.58 g pot -1 in 2015-2016) was found in NaCl 0% + AM treatment. The lowest germination %, seed yield and stover yield was found in NaCl 4% treatment. Mycorrhizal inoculation increased seed yield on an average by 31.85% during 2014-2015 and 63.71% during 2015-2016, and increased stover yield on an average by 48.56% during 2014-2015 and 63.55% during 2015-2016 over non-mycorrhizal inoculation. Therefore, it can be concluded that mycorrhizal inoculation increases germination %, growth and yield of lentil over non-mycorrhizal inoculation. The Agriculturists 2017; 15(1) 156-169
Damped transverse oscillations of interacting coronal loops

Damped transverse oscillations of magnetic loops are routinely observed in the solar corona. This phenomenon is interpreted as standing kink magnetohydrodynamic waves, which are damped by resonant absorption owing to plasma inhomogeneity across the magnetic field. The periods and damping times of these oscillations can be used to probe the physical conditions of the coronal medium. Some observations suggest that interaction between neighboring oscillating loops in an active region may be important and can modify the properties of the oscillations compared to those of an isolated loop. Here we theoretically investigate resonantly damped transverse oscillations of interacting non-uniform coronal loops. We provide a semi-analytic method, based on the T-matrix theory of scattering, to compute the frequencies and damping rates of collective oscillations of an arbitrary configuration of parallel cylindrical loops. The effect of resonant damping is included in the T-matrix scheme in the thin boundary approximation. Analytic and numerical results in the specific case of two interacting loops are given as an application.