Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Household Demand for Convenience and Nonconvenience Foods

A variation of the Almost Ideal Demand System was employed to determine the impacts of total food expenditure, income, food prices, household size, and demographic variables on household demand for convenience and nonconveninece foods in the United States. The budget shares are generally more responsive to prices than to real total expenditure. Additionally, the quantities demanded of convenience and nonconvenience foods are generally more sensitive to changes in income and own-prices than to changes in cross-prices. With regard to demographic variates, primary users of convenience foods are white households with employed household managers less than 35 years of age.
iPhos‐PseEvo: Identifying Human Phosphorylated Proteins by Incorporating Evolutionary Information into General PseAAC via Grey System Theory

Protein phosphorylation plays a critical role in human body by altering the structural conformation of a protein, causing it to become activated/deactivated, or functional modification. Given an uncharacterized protein sequence, can we predict whether it may be phosphorylated or may not? This is no doubt a very meaningful problem for both basic research and drug development. Unfortunately, to our best knowledge, so far no high throughput bioinformatics tool whatsoever has been developed to address such a very basic but important problem due to its extremely complexity and lacking sufficient training data. Here we proposed a predictor called iPhos‐PseEvo by (1) incorporating the protein sequence evolutionary information into the general pseudo amino acid composition (PseAAC) via the grey system theory, (2) balancing out the skewed training datasets by the asymmetric bootstrap approach, and (3) constructing an ensemble predictor by fusing an array of individual random forest classifiers thru a voting system. Rigorous jackknife tests have indicated that very promising success rates have been achieved by iPhos‐PseEvo even for such a difficult problem. A user‐friendly web‐server for iPhos‐PseEvo has been established at http://www.jci‐bioinfo.cn/iPhos‐PseEvo, by which users can easily obtain their desired results without the need to go through the complicated mathematical equations involved. It has not escaped our notice that the formulation and approach presented here can be used to analyze many other problems in protein science as well.
Geographical diversification in wheat farming: a copula-based CVaR framework

Purpose - – Portfolio theory suggests that geographical diversification of production units could potentially help manage the risks associated with farming, yet little research has been done to evaluate the effectiveness of a geographical diversification strategy in agriculture. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach - – The paper utilizes several tools from modern finance theory, including Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) and copulas, to construct a model for the evaluation of a diversification strategy. The proposed model – the copula-based mean-CVaR model – is then applied to the producer’s acreage allocation problem to examine the potential benefits of risk reduction from a geographical diversification strategy in US wheat farming. Along with the copula-based model, the multivariate-normal mean-CVaR model is also estimated as a benchmark. Findings - – The mean-CVaR optimization results suggest that geographical diversification is a viable risk management strategy from a farm’s profit margin perspective. In addition, the copula-based model appears more appropriate than the traditional multivariate-normal model for conservative agricultural producers who are concerned with the extreme losses of farm profitability in that the later model tends to underestimate the minimum level of risk faced by the producers for a given level of profitability. Originality/value - – The effectiveness of geographical diversification in US wheat farming is evaluated. As a methodological contribution, the copula approach is used to model the joint distribution of profit margins and CVaR is employed as a measure of downside risk.
Proteomic Identification of Annexins, Calcium-Dependent Membrane Binding Proteins That Mediate Osmotic Stress and Abscisic Acid Signal Transduction in Arabidopsis

Comparative proteomic analysis of the Arabidopsis thaliana root microsomal fraction was performed to identify novel components of salt stress signaling. Among the salt-responsive microsomal proteins, two spots that increased upon salt treatment on a two-dimensional gel were identified as the same protein, designated annexin 1 (AnnAt1). Annexins comprise a multigene family of Ca2+-dependent membrane binding proteins and have been extensively studied in animal cells. AnnAt1 is strongly expressed in root but rarely in flower tissue. In this study, the results suggest that salt stress induces translocation from the cytosol to the membrane and potential turnover of existing protein. This process is blocked by EGTA treatment, implying that AnnAt1 functions in stress response are tightly associated with Ca2+. T-DNA insertion mutants of annAt1 and a different isoform, annAt4, displayed hypersensitivity to osmotic stress and abscisic acid (ABA) during germination and early seedling growth. The results collectively suggest that AnnAt1 and AnnAt4 play important roles in osmotic stress and ABA signaling in a Ca2+-dependent manner.
Testing the Converse Party Support Model in Britain

This article supports the Converse party support model in Britain and more generally. The Converse theory, which has implications for electoral stability, is that public support for political parties comes from individuals whose partisanship strengthens as they gain experience in voting for a party. Abramson recently concluded the theory does not apply in Britain because generational change and historical (period) effects account for partisan intensities. He argued that even if period effects concealed life cycle gains, the theory would not apply because historical events in Britain—and in the United States—are too modest. From British panel data, this article reports the strongest evidence to date supporting life cycle gains in partisanship. Cohort equations show generational change in addition, as a secondary explanation. Cohort equations also disclose which historical events caused dealignment. Dealignment periods in both Britain and the United States are limited, and the events that produced them are rare.
The Contribution of Tourism to Economic Growth: An Empirical Analysis for the Case of Chile

International tourism is an important foreign exchange earner and an export for many low income countries as well as for developed ones. Nowadays many developing countries pay attention to economic policies for promoting international tourism as a potential strategic factor to development and economic growth. The tourism-led economic growth hypothesis (TLGH) postulates that tourism expansion leads to economic growth. It derives directly from the export-led growth hypothesis (ELGH) which states that the economic growth of countries can be generated not only by increasing the amount of labour and capital within the economy, but also expanding exports. Actually, exports generally contribute positively to economic growth through different ways: facilitating the exploitation of economies of scale, relieving the foreign exchange constraint, raising efficiency through increased competition and promoting the diffusion of technical knowledge. In this paper we examine the contribution of tourism to economic growth in Chile. The objective is to investigate possible causal relationships among tourism expenditure, real exchange rate and economic growth using quarterly data from 1986 to 2007. We try to find a plausible answer to the question: "Does the tourism sector cause economic growth and/or can it be a key factor for the Chilean economy? ". The hypothesis is tested empirically by using the Johansen cointegration test. In addition, a modified version of the Granger Causality test is performed in order to reveal the direction of causality between economic growth and tourism expansion. The results indicate that, during the last decades, economic growth in Chile has been sensible to the expansion of international tourism. The increase of this activity has produced multiplier effects over time. Recognition of the existence of a causal relationship between international tourism and economic growth has important implications for the development of different tourism marketing and policy decisions. In order to improve its economic growth performance, Chile, as empirical results support a tourism-led economic growth, should allocate more resources to tourism and travel industries prior to other segments.
A Theory of Limits on Corruption and Some Applications

Corruption always creates winners and, nearly always, losers. The countervailing actions taken by losers to resist their losses from corruption form the centerpiece of this paper. After presenting some examples of countervailing actions, the author analyzes their forms, causes, and effects on corruption. Countervailing actions depend on global factors, such as the system of human, political, and property rights, which vary across societies and over time. They also depend on specific factors which vary across the subunits of government. Variations in global and specific factors, respectively, help to explain different levels of corruption across governments and their subunits. Copyright 1995 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG
Estimation of the Incidence of Bacterial Vaginosis and other Vaginal Infections and its Consequences on Maternal/Fetal Outcome in Pregnant Women Attending an Antenatal Clinic in a Tertiary Care Hospital in North India

Aims: This study was undertaken to estimate the incidence of bacterial vaginosis (BV) and other vaginal infections during pregnancy and its association with urinary tract infections (UTI) and its consequences on pregnancy outcome, maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Settings and Design: Prospective cohort study. Materials and Methods: The present prospective cohort study was conducted on 200 women attending the antenatal clinic (ANC) of a tertiary hospital. All pertinent obstetric and neonatal data covering antenatal events during the course of pregnancy, delivery, puerperium and condition of each newborn at the time of birth were collected. BV was detected by both Gram stain and gold standard clinical criteria (Amsel’s composite criteria). Statistical analysis used: Data were analyzed using SPSS version 9. Fischer’s exact test, chi square tests and Student’s’ test has been used for analysis. The probability of 5% was considered as significant for continuous variables such as age, period of gestation and birth weight. Odds ratio (OR) and confidence interval (CI) with 95% probability were determined. Results: The incidence of bacterial vaginosis was 41 in 200 patients. Adverse outcomes such as preterm labor, PROM and fetal complications were found more in pregnant women who had bacterial vaginosis (N=41), bacterial vaginosis with UTI (N=14) as compared to those without bacterial vaginosis (N=118). Conclusions: The incidence of poor pregnancy outcome was higher in bacterial vaginosis with UTI. Prevention of BV and UTI is cost effective to minimize the pregnancy-related complications and preterm labor to decrease in perinatal and maternal mortality and morbidity. We recommend all antenatal patients should be screened for the presence of bacterial vaginosis, other infections and UTI.
Intra-Arab Trade: Is it Too Little?

This paper estimates a gravity model to address the issue of whether intra-Arab trade is too little. Although gravity models have been extensively used to measure bilateral trade among countries, they have - to the best of our knowledge - never been used to measure intra-Arab trade. Our results suggest that intra-Arab trade and Arab trade with the rest of the world are lower than what would be predicted by the gravity equation, suggesting considerable scope for regional - as well as multilateral - integration. The results also suggest that intra-GCC and intra-Maghreb trade are relatively low while the Mashreq countries exhibit a higher level of intragroup trade.
Show Me the Money: Do Payments Supply Environmental Services in Developing Countries?

Many of the services supplied by nature are externalities. Economic theory suggests that some form of subsidy or contracting between the beneficiaries and the providers could result in an optimal supply of environmental services. Moreover, if the poor own resources that give them a comparative advantage in the supply of environmental services, then payments for environmental services (PES) can improve environmental and poverty outcomes. While the theory is relatively straightforward, the practice is not, particularly in developing countries where institutions are weak. This article reviews the empirical literature on PES additionality by asking, “Do payments deliver environmental services, everything else being equal, or, at least, the land-use changes believed to generate environmental services? ” We examine both qualitative case studies and rigorous econometric quasi-experimental analyses. We find that government-coordinated PES have caused modest or no reversal of deforestation. Case studies of smaller-scale, user-financed PES schemes claim more substantial impacts, but few of these studies eliminate rival explanations for the positive effects. We conclude by discussing how the dearth of evidence about PES impacts, and unanswered questions about institutional preconditions and motivational “crowding out,” limit the prospects for using international carbon payments to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation.
Disease-Modifying Immunotherapy for the Management of Autoimmune Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease that destroys the insulin-secreting β-cells of the pancreas. It is now possible to predict those candidates that will progress to T1D before the full onset of the disease. Prevention of uncontrollable autoimmunity against β-cells in therapies for T1D is mandatory to preserve the β-cell mass. Therefore, immunomodulatory strategies directed to inhibiting the activity of self-reactive T cell clones as well as induction of regulatory T cells would be beneficial for prevention of T1D or recurrence of β-cell autoimmunity against islet cell allografts.
The erosive potential of lollipops.

AIM To determine the erosive potential of several commercially available lollipops and the protective effect of saliva. METHODS The erosive potential of lollipops was determined in vitro by measuring the pH and neutralisable acidity. Subsequently, 10 healthy volunteers tested different types of lollipops. Whole saliva was collected 5 minutes before, 15 minutes during and 10 minutes after consumption. Salivary flow rate and pH were determined. RESULTS Fruit flavoured and cola flavoured lollipops have a very low pH (2.3 - 2.4). Yogurt-containing and salmiak (salty liquorice) flavoured lollipops have much higher pH values (3.8-4.7). The neutralisable acidity of 1g of lollipop showed a large variation from < 200 microl to > 1700 microl 0.1 M NaOH. In vivo, lollipops induced 2.5 to 4.7-fold increase in salivary flow rate with a concomitant drop in salivary pH. For fruit flavoured and cola flavoured lollipops the salivary pH dropped below pH 5.5. For strawberry yogurt and salmiak lollipops, the salivary pH remained above this critical value. The volunteers did not report significant differences in preferences for the lollipops. CONCLUSIONS Lollipops differ considerable in erosive potential, with fruit flavoured and cola flavoured lollipops having the highest risk for inducing dental erosion. This information is of use for clinicians counselling juvenile patients with dental erosion.
The impact of a tele-ICU on provider attitudes about teamwork and safety climate

Objective To measure teamwork and safety climate in three intensive care units (ICUs) before and after remote monitoring by intensivists using telemedicine technology (tele-ICU). Design Controlled pre tele-ICU and post tele-ICU cross-sectional survey. Setting ICUs in two non-teaching community hospitals and one tertiary care teaching hospital. Subjects ICU physicians and nurses. Interventions Remote monitoring of ICU patients by intensivists. Outcome measurements Teamwork Climate Scale (TWS), a Safety Climate Score (SCS) and survey items related to tele-ICU. Main results The mean (SD) teamwork climate score was 69.7 (25.3) and 78.8 (17.2), pre and post tele-ICU (p=0.009). The mean SCS score was 66.4 (24.6) and 73.4 (18.5), pre and post tele-ICU (p=0.045). While SCS scores within the ICUs improved, the overall SCS scores for these hospitals decreased from 69.0 to 65.4. Three of the non-scaled items were significantly different pre and post tele-ICU at p<0.001. The item means (SD) pre and post tele-ICU were: “others interrupt my work to tell me something about my patient that I already know” 2.5 (1.2) and 1.6 (1.3); “I am confident that my patients are adequately covered when I am off the unit” 3.2 (1.3) and 4.2 (1.1); and “I can reach a physician in an urgent situation in a timely manner” 3.8 (1.2) and 4.6 (0.6). Conclusions Implementation of a tele-ICU was associated with improved teamwork climate and safety climate in some ICUs, especially among nurses. Providers were also more confident about patient coverage and physician accessibility, and did not report unnecessary interruptions.
Just a Matter of Identity? Support for Independence in Catalonia

The Catalan case is usually depicted in the literature as a typical example of a nation without state with a predominant civic nationalism, where the importance of dual identities tends to generate claims for self-government short of independence. However, the recent evolution of Catalan and Spanish politics shows that independence receives relevant levels of support even among groups expressing some degree of identification with the state identity. This paper aims to fill the gap in this relatively unexplored dimension of Catalan nationalism by analysing the factors that help explain support for independence in Catalonia. The results of the research point to the importance of identity in explaining attitudes towards independence but also that it receives widespread support across Catalan society, suggesting much more complex relations.
Forces and powers of slow and fast skeletal muscles in mice during repeated contractions.

1. The normalized force or power developed during each of a series of repeated contractions was averaged over the entire cycle of activity and rest to provide a measure of performance referred to as sustained force or sustained power. We tested the hypotheses that compared with slow soleus muscles, fast extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles would attain lower maximum values of sustained force, but higher maximum values of sustained power. 2. During repeated contractions at a stimulation frequency of 150 Hz, forces and powers of soleus and EDL muscles of mice were determined in situ at 35 degrees C. The train rate of repeated contractions was incremented every 5 min to increase duty cycle until a maximum value for sustained force or power was reached. 3. In one set of repeated contractions, each contraction was preceded by a quick stretch and thereafter muscle length was held constant. The stretch minimized active shortening of muscle fibres. Sustained force was calculated from force at constant length. The maximum sustained force developed by soleus muscles of 4.58 +/‐ 0.31 N cm‐2 (mean +/‐ S.E.M.) occurred at a duty cycle of 0.48. Compared with soleus muscles, EDL muscles attained a lower (P less than 0.05) maximum value of 1.38 +/‐ 0.15 N cm‐2 at a 0.35 duty cycle. 4. During isovelocity shortening contractions, the maximum value for sustained power developed by soleus muscles of 7.4 +/‐ 0.5 W kg‐1 occurred at a duty cycle of 0.18. Compared with soleus muscles, EDL muscles achieved a significantly greater maximum value of 9.1 +/‐ 0.4 W kg‐1 at a 0.21 duty cycle.
Is the Partial Adjustment Model a Useful Tool for Capital Structure Research

Recent research has focused on the estimates of the speed of adjustment to target leverage as the indicators of the importance of dynamic trade-off behavior. We show that the observed corporate financing behavior and the resulting dynamics of corporate debt ratios are such that the speed of adjustment is not an economically meaningful measure of the importance of target debt ratios. We conclude that partial adjustment regressions that rely on the existence of a well-defined target debt ratio are ill-suited for quantifying the importance of dynamic trade-off behavior vis-a-vis alternative theories. Copyright 2010, Oxford University Press.
Movement kinematics encoded in complex spike discharge of primate cerebellar Purkinje cells

MONKEYS performed a multijoint arm-reaching task that systematically varied movement direction and distance. Purkinje cell activity was recorded from 231 task-related cells, and the complex spike discharge was analyzed in relation to distance and direction. The complex spike activity of 123 Purkinje cells changed significantly relative to the background rate. Of these 123, the activity of 85 cells was related to distance and/or direction. The complex spike activity of 54 of these 85 cells fitted a cosine tuning curve for direction, generally at one distance. Using a simple linear regression model, the complex spike activity of 56 cells was significantly correlated with movement distance, usually in one direction. We conclude that the complex spike discharge of Purkinje cells is spatially tuned and strongly related to movement kinematics.
Gender, age and flexible working in later life

In many countries economic and social concerns associated with ageing populations have focused attention onto flexible forms of working as key to encouraging people to work longer and delay retirement. This article argues that there has been a remarkable lack of attention paid to the role of gender in extending working lives and contends that this gap has arisen because of two, inter-related, oversights: little consideration of relationships between gender and flexible working beyond the child-caring phase of life; and the prevailing tendency to think of end of working life and retirement as gender-neutral or following a typical male trajectory. The findings of a qualitative study of people aged 50+ in the UK challenge some of the key assumptions underpinning the utility of flexible work in extending working lives, and provide insight into the ways in which working in later life is constructed and enacted differently for men and women.
DOES GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP MATTER? COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN GLCS AND NGLCS IN MALAYSIA

This study investigates whether government participation in firm ownership leads to better firm performance of publicly listed companies in Malaysia. The sample covers 257 companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia from 1997 to 2009. Multiple regression models with balanced panel data are used to examine the impact of government ownership (GOVN) on firm performance. We find a negative relationship between GOVN and firm performance, a finding that supports the negative public perception of government-linked companies (GLCs) in Malaysia. We conclude that government ownership is not an effective tool for improvement of firm performance in Malaysia.