Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Geography, Endogenous Growth, and Innovation

If one is to understand why some regions grow and others stagnate, there are three fundamental questions that need to be answered. First, Why and when does economic activity become concentrated in a few regions, leaving others relatively underdeveloped? Second, What role does technological change play in regional economic growth? Third, How does technological advance occur, and what are the key processes and institutions involved? To answer these three questions, the authors surveyed three separate and distinct literatures that have a long and distinguished history, and all three have been recently reexamined. They include the new economic geography (Krugman), the new growth theory (Romer), and the new economics of innovation (Nelson).
Mortality-Related Risk Factors in Patients with Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension and Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension. The Importance of Response to Treatment

Background: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) are serious diseases with similar pathophysiologic aspects. The prognosis of patients with these conditions is highly uncertain, particularly incident cases. Methods: A Cox proportional hazards model was applied to a group of 85 patients (81% women, mean age 52 (18 - 82) years) with PAH (80%) and non-surgical CTEPH (20%) to evaluate risk factors for mortality. The following variables were included in the model: age, etiology, baseline 6-minute walk test (6 mWT), cardiac index, and improvement in the 6 mWT following initiation of first medical treatment. Results: In the multivariate analysis, the response to treatment, assessed by an improvement on the 6 mWT, was the most relevant prognostic factor in these patients (RR, 4.832 (95% CI, 1.888 - 12.364); p = 0.001). The remaining variables studied in this model had less influence on the prognosis: age > 50 years (RR, 0.744 (95% CI, 0.26 - 2.133); p = 0.582); etiology of connective tissue disease-associated PAH (RR, 3.145 (95% CI, 0.995-9.946); p = 0.051) or CTEPH (RR, 0.654 (95% CI, 0.179 - 2.387); p = 0.521) with respect to idiopathic PAH; baseline 6 mWT (RR, 1.173 (95% CI, 0.599 - 4.895); p = 0.315); or cardiac index (RR, 2.295 (95% CI, 0.793 - 6.642); p = 0.125). Conclusions: There is a high degree of uncer-tainty regarding the prognosis of PAH and CTEPH at the start of appropriate treatment. Our results support the idea that the initial treatment response is of paramount importance as prognostic factor in these patients.
Variability of vertical ground reaction forces collected with one and two force plates in healthy dogs

Summary Objective: To compare peak vertical force (PVF) and vertical impulse (VI) data collected with one and two force plates during the same collection time period in healthy dogs at a trot. Animals: Seventeen healthy client-owned adult dogs. Methods: Vertical ground reaction force (GRF) data were collected in a crossover study design, with four sessions on two consecutive days, and then two weeks apart (days 1, 2, 15, and 16) using both one and two force plates collection methods. A repeated measures model analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for differences in force plate PVF, VI, and average time per trial (ATT) between days, weeks, and systems (1 plate versus 2 plates). Coefficients of variation for PVF and VI were also calculated separately by forelimbs and hindlimbs, plates, day, and week. Results: The time required to obtain a valid trial was significantly longer using a single force plate when compared with two force plates. Comparing GRF data for all dogs, significant differences in PVF data were found between one and two force plates, however, these differences were diminutive in absolute magnitude, and of unknown clinical importance. Examination of the coefficients of variation for PVF and VI during the different collection periods yielded similar results. Conclusions: Use of two force plates decreased trial repetition and collection time. Vertical GRF data had a similar coefficient of variation with either one or two force plates collection techniques in healthy dogs.
Drying of transformer insulation using zeolite

Power and distribution transformers are some of the most important components in the power network. The presence of moisture in a transformer deteriorates the transformer insulation by decreasing both the electrical and mechanical strength of the solid insulation. It is of great importance to pay attention to the moisture content of composite insulation systems in order to maintain low dielectric loss, high dielectric breakdown strength and low rates of degradation of the insulating system in HV equipment. In this paper, an approach to the said problem is presented. With the application of a synthetic hygroscopic mineral (molecular sieve zeolites) - a revolutionary, environment friendly, multipurpose mineral - a continuous drying process of the transformer oil during operation without the need for service interruption is achieved. A study of the effects of zeolite on the electrical and dielectric behaviour of the insulating liquid of the transformer is included in this paper.
Sequence and domain relationships of ntrC and nifA from Klebsiella pneumoniae: homologies to other regulatory proteins.

We have determined the nucleotide sequences of two genes from Klebsiella pneumoniae, nifA, the nif‐specific activator of transcription and ntrC, the bifunctional regulatory protein involved in ‘nitrogen control’. These sequences differ significantly from those previously published. In particular, nifA extends 40 codons beyond the stop codon reported earlier. This extension encodes a putative DNA‐binding domain strongly homologous to the Rhizobium meliloti nifA protein and to some extent to the ntrC protein. In all three proteins this domain is linked by a segment of variable length to a strongly conserved central domain of 240 residues. A short segment having the properties of an interdomain linker joins the central region to an N‐terminal domain, which is weakly related in the case of the two nifA proteins. This homology is not shared by the N‐terminal domain of ntrC, which is clearly but unexpectedly related to the N‐terminal domains of a diverse set of procaryotic pleiotropic control proteins, including ompR, dye and nusA from Escherichia coli and spoOA and spoOF from Bacillus subtilis.
Risk aversion, prudence, and compensation

In a standard principal-agent setting, we use a comparative approach to study the incentives provided by different types of compensation contracts, and their valuation by managers with utility function u who are risk averse (u″<0) and prudent (u″′>0). We show that concave contracts tend to provide more incentives to risk averse managers, while convex contracts tend to be more valued by prudent managers. This is because concave contracts concentrate incentives where the marginal utility of risk averse managers is highest, while convex contracts protect against downside risk. Thus, managerial prudence can contribute to explain the prevalence of stock-options in executive compensation. However, convex contracts are not optimal when the principal is sufficiently prudent relative to the manager.
Ending Civil Service Protections in Florida Government

This study examines the impact of civil service reform in state agencies. The objective is to ascertain the extent to which the elimination of the defining characteristic of the merit system—job protection against partisan interference—has affected employees. After the introduction and background, the third section describes the study method. This is followed by the presentation of findings and discussion of their implications for the future of reform.
Nitrous oxide emissions in Midwest US maize production vary widely with band-injected N fertilizer rates, timing and nitrapyrin presence

Nitrification inhibitors have the potential to reduce N2O emissions from maize fields, but optimal results may depend on deployment of integrated N fertilizer management systems that increase yields achieved per unit of N2O lost. A new micro-encapsulated formulation of nitrapyrin for liquid N fertilizers became available to US farmers in 2010. Our research objectives were to (i) assess the impacts of urea–ammonium nitrate (UAN) management practices (timing, rate and nitrification inhibitor) and environmental variables on growing-season N2O fluxes and (ii) identify UAN treatment combinations that both reduce N2O emissions and optimize maize productivity. Field experiments near West Lafayette, Indiana in 2010 and 2011 examined three N rates (0, 90 and 180 kg N ha−1), two timings (pre-emergence and side-dress) and presence or absence of nitrapyrin. Mean cumulative N2O–N emissions (Q10 corrected) were 0.81, 1.83 and 3.52 kg N2O–N ha−1 for the rates of 0, 90 and 180 kg N ha−1, respectively; 1.80 and 2.31 kg N2O–N ha−1 for pre-emergence and side-dress timings, respectively; and 1.77 versus 2.34 kg N2O–N ha−1 for with and without nitrapyrin, respectively. Yield-scaled N2O–N emissions increased with N rates as anticipated (averaging 167, 204 and 328 g N2O–N Mg grain−1 for the 0, 90 and 180 kg N ha−1 rates), but were 22% greater with the side-dress timing than the pre-emergence timing (when averaged across N rates and inhibitor treatments) because of environmental conditions following later applications. Overall yield-scaled N2O–N emissions were 22% lower with nitrapyrin than without the inhibitor, but these did not interact with N rate or timing.
Fertility and the Standard of Living in Early Modern England: in Consideration of Wrigley and Schofield

Comparing the dating of turning points of fertility with real wage trends for the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, Wrigley and Schofield reported that an average of 50 years elapsed between changes in real wages and in fertility. Using a formal statistical procedure, it is shown that over these three centuries the average lag length was closer to 16 years. With eighteenth-century regional wage data the estimates of average lag length range between 12 and 16 years.
Do Smokers Underestimate Risks?

This paper uses a national survey of 3,119 individuals to examine the effect of lung cancer risk perceptions on smoking activity. Both smokers and nonsmokers greatly overestimate the lung cancer risk of cigarette smoking, and the extent of the overestimation is much greater than the extent of underestimation. These risk perceptions in turn significantly reduce the probability of smoking, as suggested by an economic model of risky consumption decisions. Cigarette excise taxes in effect endow individuals with additional risk perceptions comparable to their current assessed lung cancer risks.
Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Effects of Contraceptive Steroid Hormones

Governments and society have accepted and enthusiastically promoted contraception, especially contraceptive steroid hormones, as the means of assuring optimal timing and number of births, an undoubted health benefit, but they seldom advert to their limitations and side effects. This article reviews the literature on the psychological, social, and spiritual impact of contraceptive steroid use. While the widespread use of contraceptive steroid hormones has expanded life style and career choices for many women, their impact on the women's well-being, emotions, social relationships, and spirituality is seldom mentioned by advocates, and negative effects are often downplayed. When mentioned at all, depression and hypoactive sexual desire are usually treated symptomatically rather than discontinuing their most frequent pharmacological cause, the contraceptive. The rising incidence of premarital sex and cohabitation and decreased marriage rates parallel the use of contraceptive steroids as does decreased church attendance and/or reduced acceptance of Church teaching among Catholics. Lay summary While there is wide, societal acceptance of hormonal contraceptives to space births, their physical side effects are often downplayed and their impact on emotions and life styles are largely unexamined. Coincidental to the use of “the pill” there has been an increase in depression, low sexual desire, “hook-ups,” cohabitation, delay of marriage and childbearing, and among Catholics, decreased church attendance and reduced religious practice. Fertility is not a disease. Birth spacing can be achieved by natural means, and the many undesirable effects of contraception avoided.
A 1 V Wireless Transceiver for an Ultra-Low-Power SoC for Biotelemetry Applications

This paper presents a 1 V RF transceiver for biotelemetry and wireless body sensor network (WBSN) applications, realized as part of an ultra low power system-on-chip (SoC), the Sensiumtrade. The transceiver utilizes FSK/GFSK modulation at a data rate of 50 kbit/s to provide wireless connectivity between target sensor nodes and a central base-station node in a single-hop star network topology operating in the 862-870 MHz European short-range-device (SRD) and the 902-928 MHz North American Industrial, Scientific & Medical (ISM) frequency bands. Controlled by a proprietary media access controller (MAC) which is hardware implemented on chip, the transceiver operates half-duplex, achieving -102 dBm receiver input sensitivity (for 1E-3 raw bit error rate) and up to -7 dBm transmitter output power through a single antenna port. It consumes 2.1 mA during receive and up to 2.6 mA during transmit from a 0.9 to 1.5 V supply. It is fabricated in a 0.13 mum CMOS technology and occupies 7 mm2 in a SoC die size of 4 times 4 mm2.
Electron Microscopic Radioautographic Study on Protein Synthesis in Mitochondria of Binucleate Hepatocytes of Aging Mice

In order to study the aging changes of intramitochondrial protein synthesis in mouse hepatocytes, 10 groups of aging mice, each consisting of three individuals, total 30, from fetal day 19 to postnatal year 2, were injected with 3H-leucine, a protein precursor, sacrificed 1 h later, and the liver tissues processed for electron microscopic radioautography. On electron microscopic radioautograms obtained from each animal, the numbers of mitochondria, the numbers of labeled mitochondria, and the mitochondrial labeling index labeled with 3H-leucine that showed protein synthesis in each hepatocyte, both mononucleate and binucleate cells, were counted and the averages in respective aging groups were compared. From the results, it was demonstrated that the numbers of mitochondria, the numbers of labeled mitochondria, and the labeling indices of intramitochondrial protein syntheses in both mononucleate and binucleate hepatocytes of mice at various ages increased due to development of animals. The numbers of mitochondria, the numbers of labeled mitochondria, and the labeling indices of intramitochondrial protein synthesis in binucleate hepatocytes were more than those of mononucleate hepatocytes at the same aging stages.
The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia

Table of Contents: Acknowledgements Introduction I. The Woman Question 1. The Bolsheviks and the Genealogy of the Woman Question II. Gender in the Context of State-Making and Civil War 2. Sharp Eyes and Tender Hearts: Passing New Legislation and Fighting the Civil War 3. Identity and Organisation: Creating the Women's Sections of the Communist Party 4. War Communism at Its Height: Lobbying on Behalf of Women Workers III. The New Threat to the Social Contract 5. The Liquidation Crisis in Zhenotdel Politics 6. The Crisis in Economics: The Social Contract Endangered 7. The New Threat: Zhenotdel Criticisms of the Social Costs of NEP 8. Daily Life and Gender Transformation Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index
Recent Issues in Emerging-economies Macroeconomics

In this paper, we summarize the recent advancement of emerging-economies macroeconomics. We begin with stylized facts and models of real business-cycles (RBCs) for emerging-market countries and then move onto the discussion of various issues associated with overborrowings and sovereign debts. The common feature of these models is that their analysis is mainly focused on the framework of RBC models for small open economies combined with financial frictions. We also discuss nominal features of emerging economies that are associated with the behavior of nominal exchange rate and foreign reserves observed during the recent global financial crisis, as well as the practice and impact of conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures. We also present some extensions of existing emerging-economies models that allow for the significant role of conventional monetary and fiscal policies. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, the canonical specification of recent models with pecuniary externalities is modified to allow for channels through which conventional monetary and fiscal policies can affect the degree of pecuniary externalities. Second, we attempt to explain the behavior of nominal exchange rate ‘going up elevators and coming down stairs’ shown in emerging economies during periods of zero lower bounds on the short-term nominal interest rate. Third, we modify a prototypical model of sovereign debt to show the negative correlation between the maturity of foreign debt and the accumulation of foreign reserves when the level of foreign debt is substantially high.
Corporate Governance and Financial Distress: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

We investigate the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and the risk of financial distress in the context of the Chinese transitional economy. Using a sample of ninety-six financially distressed companies and ninety-six healthy companies, we find that large shareholder ownership, state ownership, and the proportion of independent directors are negatively associated with the probability of distress. Additionally, managerial agency costs are badly detrimental to a company's financial status. However, the degree of balanced ownership, managerial ownership, board size, and CEO duality do not significantly affect the probability of default. Furthermore, we test the influence of state-controlling right by subgrouping the sample into state-controlled and non-state-controlled companies. The results indicate that corporate-governance attributes act differently on the status of financial distress between the two subsamples.
What Do Industry-Specialist Auditors Know?

Recent shifts in audit practice have dprovided more substantive and pervasive roles for specialized industry knowledge (e.g., see Bell et al. [1997]). Specifically, most of the largest firms now are structured along industry lines and designate most, if not all, of their auditors as industry specialists (Emerson [1993]). This change suggests that a preferred way for auditors to acquire industry knowledge is via specialized indirect experience (e.g., training) coupled with focused direct experience (e.g., working exclusively on audit engagements in a particular industry). Our experimental investigation of what industry-specialist auditors know is intended to probe the knowledge implications of industry specialists? focused training and narrow, but deep, direct experiences.
Spatiotemporal changes of snow cover over the Tibetan plateau based on cloud-removed moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer fractional snow cover product from 2001 to 2011

Abstract Snow cover changes over the Tibetan plateau (TP) are examined using moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) daily fractional snow cover (FSC) data from 2001 to 2011 as well as in situ temperature data. First, the accuracy of the MODIS FSC data under clear sky conditions is evaluated by comparing with Landsat 30-m observations. Then we describe a cloud-gap-filled (CGF) method using cubic spline interpolation algorithm to fill in data gaps caused by clouds. Finally, the spatial and temporal changes of snow cover are analyzed on the basis of the MODIS-derived snow-covered area and snow-covered days (SCD) data. Results show that the mean absolute error of MODIS FSC data under clear sky condition is about 0.098 over the TP. The CGF method is efficient in cloud reduction (overall mean absolute error of the retrieved FSC data is 0.092). There is a very high inter-annual and intra-seasonal variability of snow cover in the 11 years. The higher snow cover corresponds well with the huge mountains. The accumulation and melt periods of snow cover vary in different elevation zones. About 34.14% (5.56% with a significant decline) and 24.75% (3.9% with a significant increase) of the study area presents declining and increasing trend in SCD, respectively. The inter-annual fluctuation of snow cover can be explained by the high negative correlations observed between the snow cover and the in situ temperature, especially in some elevations of February, April, May, August, and September.
Function of plant shoot meristems.

Growth and development of higher plants is directed by the continuous activity of meristems, sites of sustained cell division. Organs are formed at the flanks of the shoot meristem, while the central region contains pluripotent stem cells. The developmental programme of the meristem is coordinated by interactions between cells in separate regions of meristems, and some of the genes involved have been studied. Transcription factors can be exchanged between meristem cell layers. The control of stem cell fate involves a ligand/receptor interaction that regulates the activity of a transcription factor, and genes expressed in organ primordia can feedback to restrict the activity of meristematic genes.
Labour market flexibility and innovation: geographical and technological determinants

Purpose - This paper aims to shed light upon the controversial relationship between labour market flexibility and innovation in Italy, paying attention both to inter-sectoral heterogeneity and to the regional differences. Design/methodology/approach - A set of hypotheses concerning the context-dependent relationship between labour market flexibility and innovation has been formulated by combining the main results of the theoretical literature concerning this topic. Regional patents are used as a proxy of innovation, while job turnover and wages represent labour market indicators of flexibility. Non-parametric models and dynamic structural specification of panel data have been estimated to test the aforementioned hypotheses. Findings - The results show that higher job turnover has a significant and negative impact on patent activities in regional sectors of northern Italy, while a positive and significant effect of blue and white collar wages has been generally found in the estimations. Research limitations/implications - There is a lack of updated information regarding labour market data in the Italian economy. Practical implications - Knowing in which sectoral and regional context labour flexibility has (or does not have) a positive influence on innovation plays a key role for the decisions of policy makers. Originality/value - This paper deals with the influence that the heterogeneity of the contexts (at the sectoral and geographical level) exerts on the relationship between the labour market and innovation. Moreover, the endogenous character of this relationship and the cumulative nature of innovative activities have been taken into account by means of a parsimonious dynamic econometric model.