Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Cost Containment on the Outpatient in Japan - A VAR Approach

This paper examined the effects of restrictions on both the demand and supply sides of the health sector in Japan over a certain time period. Because the effect of supply side restrictions could not be taken into account in previous studies, we employed econometric time series techniques to develop a four-variable VAR model of the health sector over a sample period from November 1999 to March 2004. We used a first-difference series regarding the number of general beds to capture productivity shock. By using impulse response functions and a forecast error variance decomposition, we found that a price shock dominated the behavior of both patient and physician at forecast horizons, although in the short run the rise in the intensity of treatment leads to a decrease in the rate of doctor consultations. By estimating the structural VAR model under a recursive constraint, it was found that all of the causal links in the model constituted an invalid specification. We concluded that the increase in the patient's coinsurance rate had the effect of restraining health care costs but that a labor productivity shock did not have a permanent effect on the doctor consultation. The supply side of the health sector might absorb the change that occurred in the demand side.
Biomass production and essential oil yield from leaves, fine stems and resprouts using pruning the crown of Aniba canelilla (H.B.K.) (Lauraceae) in the Central Amazon

Aniba canelilla (H.B.K.) Mez. e uma especie arborea da Amazonia que produz oleo essencial. A extracao do oleo de suas folhas e galhos pode ser uma forma alternativa de evitar a derrubada do tronco para sua producao de oleo essencial. O objetivo deste estudo foi analisar os fatores que podem influenciar a producao de oleo essencial e sua biomassa da rebrota apos a poda de folhas e galhos das arvores de A. canelilla. As copas das arvores foram podadas na estacao chuvosa e, apos nove meses, as folhas e os galhos da copa remanescente e da rebrota foram coletadas na estacao seca. Os resultados mostraram que o rendimento e a composicao quimica de oleo essencial diferiram entre os galhos finos, as folhas e as rebrotas. A producao de oleo essencial de galhos diferiu entre as estacoes e teve maior producao nos galhos da rebrota do que nos galhos velhos da copa remanescente. A producao de oleo essencial e de biomassa das folhas da rebrota foram diferentemente relacionadas com a abertura de dossel, indicando que a luz aumenta a producao de oleo essencial e diminui a de biomassa nas folhas da rebrota. Este estudo revelou que as diferencas entre os orgaos da planta na producao de oleo essencial e a abertura de dossel devem ser levadas em consideracao para podar a copa da arvore da A. canelilla e alcancar maior produtividade de oleo.
The Relationship between Willingness to Communicate and Two Types of Speaking Task: Narrative and Dialogue

This study attempted to examine the relationship between WTC and two types of speaking tasks: Dialogue and narrative/monologue. The significance of this study lies in its theoretical contributions to the WTC construct and the pedagogical implications in second language teaching and learning. Sixty one intermediate female EFL learners were selected through an Oxford Placement Test (OPT) from Tabarestan English Institute in Nowshahr. A quantitative research method within a descriptive design using questionnaires was employed. Statistical data analysis methods of Pearson Product-moment correlation coefficient and descriptive statistics were utilized in line with the two research questions . Results indicated a positive correlation between the WTC level and the narrative speaking as well as the dialogue speaking scores, i.e., the high L2 WTC leads to a better performance in L2 speaking skill in general. However, the correlation between WTC and dialogue speaking was stronger than the WTC and narrative speaking, i.e., WTC level affects dialogues better than narrative /monologue. To sum up, it was found that the participants with lower WTC level were weaker in L2 speaking in general and dialogues in particular.
A review of the experimental approaches used in clinical studies to evaluate the health benefits of plant food supplements associated with infectious diseases.

The objective of this review was to evaluate the experimental approaches used in clinical trials to support the benefit claims of plant food supplements (PFS) with reported activity on infectious diseases. A literature search was conducted on a list of 309 plant species currently used in food supplements in Europe using the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) PubMed Database to identify all the clinical trials for evaluating the benefit claim for preventing or treating infectious diseases in humans. The searches included a combination of terms related to the name of plants, class of infectious agents and therapeutic activities against infectious disease. By limiting the searches to clinical studies, only 27 articles representing 19 plant species were identified. From this list, 13 papers from the 10 plants most extensively researched were critically evaluated for assessing methods used to assess the benefits of PFS. Different study designs were used ranging from an open trial with no placebo or control and no randomization to double-blind randomized placebo controlled trials including a crossover design. Although the experimental approaches described in this review were found to be suitable for evaluating the benefit claims of PFS for treating infectious diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites, the clinical study design should be more standardised as many studies lacked a control group and sufficient population size to be statistically acceptable taking into consideration patient variability. The reporting of the results varied and should also be standardised to include all the study parameters and data collected.
Current Account Reversals and Long Term Imbalances: Application to the Central and Eastern European Countries

In our study we investigate the evolution of short-term and long-term external positions in the CEECs and make an attempt at predicting their future paths. First, we analyze the long term relationship between net foreign assets and a set of explanatory variables and construct a measure of imbalances which equals the deviation of net foreign assets from their equilibrium level. Later we incorporate this measure in our prediction of current account reversals and compare the forecasts of this model with the baseline model that does not account for long-term disequilibria. We show that the inclusion of stock disequilibrium measures improves the model’s performance in and out-of-sample. By doing this, we fill the gap in the literature on external sustainability, which despite the recent emphasis on stock adjustment (Calderon et al., 2000, Lane and Milesi-Ferretti, 2001), has not yet assessed the effectiveness of stocks in predicting sudden current account reversals. Finally, we apply this methodology to the CEECs. We find that net foreign assets lie below their long-term equilibrium level in allcountries except Slovenia and Baltic States, but we predict current account reversals only for Hungary, Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Expanding the job demands-resources model to classify innovation-predicting working conditions

"We applied the job demands-resources (JD-R) model (Demerouti, Bakker, Nachreiner, & Schaufeli, 2001) and a new categorization approach to study the relationship between working conditions and innovation. By applying confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling to a cross-sectional online study (N = 780), we showed that two types of demands, hindrance and challenge, and two types of job resources, task-related and social, represent different types of working conditions with respect to innovation. Task-related and social job resources positively predicted individual innovation. Social job resources and challenge job demands revealed a positive association with perception of organizational innovation, whereas hindrance job demands were negatively related to it. the relevance of the studied types of working conditions for individual and perceived organizational innovation varied. "
First experiments on massive gas injection at JET - consequences for disruption mitigation in JET and ITER

JET-EFDA, Culham Science Centre, OX14 3DB, Abingdon, UK Institute for Energy Research Plasma Physics, Forschungszentrum Julich, Association EURATOM-FZJ, Trilateral Euregio Cluster, 52425 Julich, Germany Laboratorio Nacional de Fusion, Asociacion EURATOM-CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain EURATOM-UKAEA Fusion Association, Culham, UK Association Max-Planck-Institut fur Plasmaphysik, EURATOM-Assoziation, D-85748 Garching, Germany Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas-Laboratorium voor Plasmafysica, Association EURATOM-Belgian State, ERM/KMS, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear/IST, Associacao EURATOM-IST, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal CEA, IRFM, F-13108 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France The mitigation of thermal and mechanical loads during disruptions is an urgent task to be solved for ITER to ensure the integrity of plasma-facing components (PFC). However, extreme loads are already an issue for present day machines like JET and in particular for the new ITER-like wall implemented in JET which will have the material used in ITER for DT operation. Reduction of such loads to tolerable values is needed, thereby, the generation of high-energy electrons (RE) is of special concern. RE in JET can carry currents of up to 50% of plasma current before the disruption, leading to a fast and localised deposition of several MJ on plasma-facing components.
Signal processing techniques for continuous monitoring of distortion product otoacoustic emissions in noisy industrial environments

Current progress in occupational health to prevent occupational noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is based on an average exposure/damage relationship. While this average is established on a group of exposed workers, individual susceptibility to NIHL is an important factor in a worker’s actual risk of developing NIHL and is not accounted for at the moment. The measurement of otoacoustic emissions (OAE) is often considered a reliable tool to detect the onset of NIHL. Nevertheless, individual field measurement of OAEs on industrial workers is very challenging in practice because high ambient noise levels hinder proper OAE measurements. Use of OAE measurement probes with high passive noise isolation attenuates most of the high frequency ambient noise, but is often insufficient for the low frequency content. In previous research work by the authors, a new type of OAE system was designed to monitor OAE levels continuously on an individual worker. This new OAE system is capable of detecting a slight change in hearing sensitivity. The system features a pair of intra-aural hearing protectors (earplugs) which are equipped with an external microphone, an internal microphone and a pair of miniature receivers. Adaptive filtering on the OAE microphone signal is used to further improve the Signal-to-Noise ratio of the distortion product OAE (DPOAE) in frequencies where passive isolation remains insufficient. In this study, simulation and benchmarking of a further improved version of a DPOAE signal extraction algorithm designed for small digital signal processors (DSP), against other proven algorithms, shows a more stable performance across various DPOAE signal dynamic ranges and noise floor levels.
Impact of iceberg melting on Mediterranean thermohaline circulation during Heinrich events

Down-core samples of planktonic and benthic foraminifera were analyzed for oxygen and carbon isotopes in International Marine Past Global Changes Study (IMAGES) core MD99-2343 in order to study the interactions between climate change in the Northern Hemisphere and the western Mediterranean thermohaline circulation at times of Heinrich events (HE). Our results confirm the antiphase correlation between enhanced North Atlantic Deep Water formation and low ventilation in the Mediterranean. However, this study reveals that this antiphase relationship in deepwater formation between the North Atlantic and Mediterranean was interrupted during times of HE when the injection of large volumes of water from melting icebergs reached the entrance to the Mediterranean. These events, which lasted less than 1000 years, are represented by pronounced decreases in both planktonic d18O and benthic d13C signals. Lower salinities of Mediterranean surface water resulted in a slowdown of western Mediterranean deepwater overturn even though cold sea surface temperatures and drier climate should have resulted in enhanced deepwater formation.
Re-Examining The Finance-Growth Nexus: Structural Break, Threshold Cointegration And Causality Evidence From The Ecowas

The aim of this paper is to re-examine the cointegrating and causal relationship between financial development and economic growth in the ECOWAS. To this end, we use the Gregory and Hansen (1996a, 1996b) approach to cointegration with structural change and the procedure for non-causality test of Toda and Yamamoto (1995). Data are from the World Bank (2007) and cover the period 1960-2005. We show that there is a long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth in six countries, namely, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote di¯Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In addition, we show that financial development i®leadsi¯ economic growth in Ghana and Mali while growth causes finance in Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone, and a bidirectional causality in Cape Verde and Liberia. The policy implication is that Cape Verde, Ghana and Mali should give policy priority to financial reform while Burkina Faso, Cote di¯Ivoire and Sierra Leone should promote economic growth.
Integration of the Employed: The sociocultural integration of highly educated migrants in Sweden

In 2008, Sweden changed its labor migration legislation and allowed for labor migrants from non EU/EEA countries to migrate to Sweden, which had heavily been restricted since the 1970s. This shift in labor migration policy is mirrored in Swedish integration policy where the focus in recent years has been on labor market integration. This thesis aims to investigate the sociocultural integration of migrants who are employed and, in the Swedish context, assumed to be integrated. In addition, sociocultural integration is related to employment and length of stay. Sociocultural integration is measured by three indicators: knowledge of Swedish language, having Swedish friends, and membership in organizations. The data was collected through sixteen semistructured interviews of highly educated migrants with employment in Sweden and analyzed using four integration theories. The study reveals that employed migrants are only partially socioculturally integrated. Respondents presented low levels of Swedishlanguage knowledge, which can be explained by their short stay in the country as well having international workplaces where mostly English is spoken. However, these workplaces also offer respondents opportunities to meet natives and most respondents met their Swedish friends through work. There is a need for further studies of integration, in particular those that would explore multiple dimensions of integration and incorporate migrants who are already economically integrated.
Approximations on Risk-Averse Markov Decision Processes

We consider the problem of approximating the values and the optimal policies in risk-averse discounted Markov Decision Processes with in nite horizon. We study the properties of the rolling horizon and the approximate rolling horizon procedures, proving bounds which imply the convergence of the procedures when the horizon length tends to in nity. We also analyze the e ects of uncertainties on the transition probabilities, the cost functions and the discount factors.
Effects of Handheld Games on Students Learning in Mathematics

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of handheld gaming on student learning in mathematics. During the four-month instructional period, 50 2nd grade students from three classes used a handheld Skills Arena software program or paper-based flash cards under various conditions depending on their teacher's preference. Overall results proved that the handheld game activity in the classroom was beneficial to students in learning mathematics, especially for low-ability students, regardless of gender and ethnic background. In a non-experimental, correlational analysis, the results reveal that handheld game scores and attitude toward mathematics correlated significantly to students' scores on a mathematic test. In the results of a quasi-experimental control-group design with Repeated Measures, handheld gaming students outperformed students who did not use a handheld game on a mathematic test. Additionally, handheld low-level students outperformed those who did not use a handheld game on the same test.
Bands of respiratory rate and cloacal temperature for different broiler chicken strains

The objective of this investigation was to estimate ideal bands of respiratory rate and cloacal temperature for broiler chicken strains during the rearing period and to evaluate the influence of time of exposure on bird physiological variables under different thermal stress conditions. The research was conducted in a climatic chamber during the six weeks of the rearing period, with Avian and Cobb strains exposed to two climatic conditions (comfort and stress), in three distinct times of exposure, in three conditions (before going to the chamber; at the end of exposure time; 30 minutes after the end of exposure), in four treatments: comfort with 60 minutes of exposure; stress with 30 minutes of exposure; stress with 60 minutes of exposure; stress with 90 minutes of exposure. Bands of respiratory rate and cloacal temperature were elaborated for both strains, for each one of the weeks of the rearing period. Strains differed, regardless of treatments and conditions adopted in the research on the third, fifth and sixth weeks of life in relation to the cloacal temperature. The Cobb strain is more tolerant to thermal stress in comparison with the Avian. There was difference for both variables between comfort and stress, but time of exposure to stress did not influence the physiological response of birds, except for cloacal temperature on the second week of life.
Seasonal Limnological Variation and Macro Benthic Diversity of River Yamuna at Kalsi Dehradun of Uttarakhand

River Yamuna is a glacier fed river in Dehradun district of Uttarakhand (India). The seasonal variation of River Yamuna at Kalsi was studied for a period of one year. In the present study various physico-chemical parameters i.e., temperature, transparency, velocity, turbidity, conductivity, TS, TDS, TSS, pH, total alkalinity, total hardness, calcium, magnesium, Chloride, Free CO , DO, BOD, COD, phosphate, nitrate, sodium and 2 potassium were analyzed for various seasons; summer, monsoon, winter from the period of August 2010 to July 2011 in surface water of river Yamuna including macro benthic diversity. The present study revealed that the physico-chemical parameters showed a great seasonal variation and turbidity and Total Solids were found to be highest in Monsoon period which had a strong impact on other physico-chemical factors of river. 27 genera belonging to seven orders of macro vertebrates were found which include Ephemeroptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, Hemiptera, Plecoptera, Odonata and Trichoptera indicating good quality of water in River Yamuna at Kalsi. Many genera were seasonally and monthly absent at different times in the river; however the overall diversity was found to be maximum in winter and summer. Correlation between the hydrological attributes showed good relationship and Transparency, dissolved oxygen and pH were found to be most important variables in shaping benthic faunal assemblage.
52-week High Momentum Strategy: Evidence from Iranian Stock Markets

This paper extends the 52-high momentum literature which published by George and Hwang in 2004, by stressing the parameters of the trading strategy to investigate its robustness. This study illustrates whether 52-week high momentum strategy is profitable in Tehran Stock Exchange. The time period analyzed is 2000 to 2012. Our sample includes all the companies joined the stock market before 2000 and have been traded in at least 70% of the total trading days from 2000 to 2012. In this research, in order to form winner and loser portfolios a similar method to Jegadeesh and Titmanâ€™s (1983) has been used. The strategy buys stock whose price has increased over the previous six months, and who also close to their 52- week high price. Stocks are only bought (sold), if their price has increased (decreased) over the past six months and is close to (far from) the 52- week high Price. The results suggest that using 52-week high Momentum strategy in TSE2 have created positive abnormal returns in the medium time horizon.
Revenue Decentralisation and Economic Growth in the Spanish Autonomous Communities

This paper is an empirical sequel to our previous theoretical analysis of the relationship between tax decentralisation and economic growth. Taking such theoretical work as a point of departure, we ask whether the process of fiscal decentralisation experienced by the Spanish economy since the early eighties supports our main findings. Following recent analytical considerations for fiscal decentralisation measurement, several revenue decentralisation indicators for the Spanish case are proposed. According with the results, we might conclude that revenue control decentralisation to lower levels of government in Spain has generated a positive effect on economic growth. JEL classification: C32; H77;O47
Optical constants of refractory oxides at high temperatures - Mid-infrared properties of corundum, spinel, and α-quartz, potential carriers of the 13 μm feature

Context. Many cosmic dust species, among them refractory oxides, form at temperatures higher than 300 K. Nevertheless, most astrophysical studies are based on the room-temperature optical constants of solids, such as corundum and spinel. A more realistic approach is needed for these materials, especially in the context of modeling late-type stars. Aims. We aimed at deriving sets of optical constants of selected, astrophysically relevant oxide dust species with high melting points. Methods. A high-temperature, high-pressure cell and a Fourier-transform spectrometer were used to measure reflectance spectra of polished samples. For corundum (α-Al2O3), spinel (MgAl2O4), and α-quartz (SiO2), temperature-dependent optical constants were measured from 300 K up to more than 900 K. Small particle spectra were also calculated from these data. Results. All three examined oxides show a significant temperature dependence of their mid-IR bands. For the case of corundum, we find that the 13 μm emission feature – seen in the IR spectra of many AGB stars – can very well be assigned to this mineral species. The best fit of the feature is achieved with oblate corundum grains at (mean) temperatures around 550 K. Spinel remains a viable carrier of the 13 μ feature as well, but only for T < 300 K and nearly spherical grain shapes. Under such circumstances, spinel grains may also account for the 31.8 μm band that is frequently seen in sources of the 13 μm feature and which has not yet been identified with certainty.