Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ECONOMIC GROWTH AND FISCAL DEFICITS: Empirical Evidence from Nigeria

There has been considerable debate about the relationship between fiscal deficits and economic growth. Although macroeconomic theory postulates that fiscal deficits stimulate economic growth, empirical research has been less conclusive about this relationship. This paper examines this controversial relationship within the Nigerian context, using data over the period, 1970 – 2006. We adopted a modeling technique that incorporates cointegration and structural analysis. The results indicate that (i) fiscal deficit affects economic growth negatively, with an adjustment lag in the system; (ii) a one percent increase in fiscal deficit is capable of diminishing economic growth by about 0.023 percent; and (iii) there is a strong negative association between government consumption expenditure and economic growth.
Union Membership Statistics in 24 Countries

Jelle Visser is the scientific director at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. E-mail: Jelle.Visser@uva.nl An analysis of "adjusted" union membership data in 24 countries yields past and present union density rates; the data provide explanatory factors for the differences and trends in unionization Union membership statistics in 24 countries
Living donor liver transplantation and tolerance: a potential strategy in cholangiocarcinoma.

Background. Donor-specific immune tolerance has been reported in isolated cases of kidney transplantation associated with bone marrow transplantation. The following is a description of a living donor liver transplantation for a hilar cholangiocarcinoma in a previous recipient of an allogeneic bone marrow transplant. Method. A right hemi-liver transplantation was performed using a liver allograft obtained from the same previous bone marrow donor. A neoadjuvant chemo-irradiation protocol was implemented before the procedure. Because of the presence of full chimerism, no immunosuppression has been necessary for the last 22 months. Results. Liver graft function has remained excellent, and a magnetic resonance imaging scan at one and a half years has shown no tumor recurrence. A control liver biopsy at 1 year showed no rejection. Conclusions. Neoadjuvant chemo-irradiation therapy and removal of all immunosuppression after liver transplantation formed the basic structure of this approach. Additional benefits provided by living donor liver transplantation included limitation of tumor progression by diminishing the pretransplantation waiting time, radical excision of the tumor through a complete hepatectomy, and optimal timing of the transplant procedure within a neoadjuvant chemo-irradiation protocol.
Evaluation of Cathepsins D and G and EC 3.4.24.15 as Candidate β‐Secretase Proteases Using Peptide and Amyloid Precursor Protein Substrates

Abstract: No single protease has emerged that possesses all the expected properties for β‐secretase, including brain localization, appropriate peptide cleavage specificity, and the ability to cleave amyloid precursor protein exactly at the amino‐terminus of β‐amyloid peptide. We have isolated and purified a brain‐derived activity that cleaves the synthetic peptide substrate SEVKMDAEF between methionine and aspartate residues, as required to generate the amino‐terminus of β‐amyloid peptide. Its molecular size of 55–60 kDa and inhibitory profile indicate that we have purified the metalloprotease EC 3.4. 24.15. We have compared the sequence specificity of EC 3.4. 24.15, cathepsin D, and cathepsin G for their ability to cleave the model peptide SEVKMDAEF or related peptides that contain substitutions reported to modulate β‐amyloid peptide production. We have also tested the ability of these enzymes to form carboxy‐terminal fragments from full‐length, membrane‐embedded amyloid precursor protein substrate or amyloid precursor protein that contains the Swedish KM → NL mutation. The correct cleavage was tested with an antibody specific for the free amino‐terminus of β‐amyloid peptide. Our results exclude EC 3.4. 24.15 as a candidate β‐secretase. Although cathepsin G cleaves the model peptide correctly, it displays poor ability to cleave the Swedish KM → NL peptide and does not generate carboxy‐terminal fragments that are immunoreactive with amino‐terminal‐specific antiserum. Cathepsin D does not cleave the model peptide or show specificity for wild‐type amyloid precursor protein; however, it cleaves the Swedish “NL peptide” and “NL precursor” substrates appropriately. Our results suggest that cathepsin D could act as β‐secretase in the Swedish type of familial Alzheimer's disease and demonstrate the importance of using full‐length substrate to verify the sequence specificity of candidate proteases.
Diffusion of Social Media Among County 4-H Programs in Tennessee

Over the past decade, Cooperative Extension and 4-H professionals have been faced with the decision of whether they should adopt new communication technologies such as social media to interact with their rapidly growing audience. Current research on social media and Extension shows that there are some identified risks and barriers (Fuess & Humphreys, 2011; Seger, 2011); however, many Extension professionals believe that social media usage could be very beneficial for Extension and\or 4-H usage (Coates, 2004; Rhoades, Thomas & Davis, 2009; Kinsey, 2010). In order to increase the body of empirical research on this subject, a quantitative study was conducted based on Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 1983). The study was conducted via an online survey distributed to all 4-H program leaders in Tennessee, and received a 49 percent (n=196) response rate. This study sought to describe the usage of social media by county 4-H program leaders in Tennessee, and to identify key perceptions toward current and future usage of social media for 4-H. The most commonly utilized social media services were Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The results indicated that the majority of program leaders had a positive view of social media usage and felt that it was an efficient and effective way to communicate information to their audience. While program leaders did not indicate lack of knowledge as a problem, they did express willingness to participate in training opportunities to learn more about social media and improve their current usage. Overall, the study determined that social media is gaining widespread usage throughout rural and urban county 4-H programs in Tennessee, and that increased efforts toward training and research in this area are warranted.
The Global Creativity Index 2015

This report presents the 2015 edition of the Global Creativity Index, or GCI. The GCI is a broad-based measure for advanced economic growth and sustainable prosperity based on the 3Ts of economic development—talent, technology, and tolerance. It rates and ranks 139 nations worldwide on each of these dimensions and on our overall measure of creativity and prosperity.
Personality and the Slope of Loudness Function

The slope of the loudness function in direct magnitude estimation was studied at two frequencies in two groups of naive subjects. In the first group a limited scale was used and in the second group, an open ended scale. In all conditions the slope of the loudness function was found to be significantly positively correlated with test anxiety scores.
Oil Price Volatility, Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth: A Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) Analysis of Some Selected Oil‐Exporting African Countries

Fiscal policy in oil-centred economies is facing specific challenges, both in the long run, as regards intergenerational equity and fiscal sustainability, and in the short run, as regards macroeconomic stabilisation and fiscal planning. Specifically, fiscal policy in most oil-exporting countries in Africa has been expansionary over the past years in the wake of high oil prices. Fiscal expansion has added to inflationary pressure, and monetary policy has been constrained in tackling inflation as a result of prevailing exchange rate regimes. The sharp fall in oil prices since mid-2008 has brought to the fore a different question—whether oil exporters in Africa can sustain spending levels reached in previous years. The study makes use of quarterly data that span between 1990:q1 and 2010:q4. A panel vector autoregressive technique was employed to examine the impact of oil price volatility on economic performance of five oil-exporting countries in Africa. The countries are Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya and Nigeria. In order to study the responses of shocks, the study identifies oil price volatility, real gross domestic product (real GDP), fiscal deficit, gross investment and money supply shocks by ordering the variables in this way and using a standard Choleski factorisation. The impulse response function's result shows that of all the macroeconomic variables considered, gross investment respond more effectively to oil price volatility. However, the responses of fiscal deficit, real GDP and money supply are less effective. Overall, these findings suggest that gross investment is the main route through which volatility in oil price influenced the real sector of these economies.
Empirical analysis of Public Key Infrastructures and Investigation of Improvements

This thesis provides thorough empirical analyses of three important Public Key Infrastructures and their deployment, namely X.509 (HTTPS), OpenPGP, and SSH. We put a special focus on X.509 and identify several weaknesses, from which we derive requirements for improvements. We analyse several proposals to improve X.509 with respect to these requirements and evaluate their robustness in different threat models. We present our own contribution to detect and locate Men-in-the-middle attacks against TLS.
Domestic Sourcing by Foreign-Owned Subsidiaries

This paper investigates the development of domestic sourcing by foreign-owned subsidiaries (FOS) in the UK. The regional development and international-business literatures are used to develop a conceptual framework on the links between autonomy, the use of networks, and domestic sourcing. Data from a survey of German, French, and US FOS in the UK is used to test the model. The results indicate that increased use of networks and increased operational decision-making autonomy are associated with increased domestic sourcing, but that only a minority of FOS are increasing their use of domestic sourcing. The growing importance of global sourcing is considered as a possible explanation for the low proportion of FOS that are increasing their use of domestic sourcing. The implications for regional-development policy of the findings are also assessed.
Homology modeling of rat and human cytochrome P450 2D (CYP2D) isoforms and computational rationalization of experimental ligand-binding specificities.

The ligand-binding characteristics of rat and human CYP2D isoforms, i.e., rat CYP2D1-4 and human CYP2D6, were investigated by measuring IC(50) values of 11 known CYP2D6 ligands using 7-methoxy-4-(aminomethyl)coumarin (MAMC) as substrate. Like CYP2D6, all rat CYP2D isozymes catalyzed the O-demethylation of MAMC with K(m) and V(max) values ranging between 78 and 145 microM and 0.048 and 1.122 min(-1), respectively. To rationalize observed differences in the experimentally determined IC(50) values, homology models of the CYP2D isoforms were constructed. A homology model of CYP2D6 was generated on the basis of crystallized rabbit CYP2C5 and was validated on its ability to reproduce binding orientations corresponding to metabolic profiles of the substrates and to remain stable during unrestrained molecular dynamics simulations at 300 K. Twenty-two active site residues, sharing up to 59% sequence identity, were identified in the CYP2D binding pockets and included CYP2D6 residues Phe120, Glu216, and Asp301. Electrostatic potential calculations displayed large differences in the negative charge of the CYP2D active sites, which was consistent with observed differences in absolute IC(50) values. MD studies on the binding mode of sparteine, quinidine, and quinine in CYP2D2 and CYP2D6 furthermore concurred well with experimentally determined IC(50) values and metabolic profiles. The current study thus provides new insights into differences in the active site topology of the investigated CYP2D isoforms.
Open Access: What Scientists Think? A survey of researcher's attitude towards Open Access

The Internet has changed how we conduct and share research, primarily by increasing the global reach of scholarly communication. Today the world of information is divided between two views on costs and business. One group believes that content should be freely accessible for the development of further knowledge. The other group believes that content should be maintained by market value for quality products and incentives to the intellectual content. Open Access (OA) has come from the growing interest of researchers in experimenting with innovative mechanisms to disseminate their research findings. However OA is still far behind what it should be in the country like India. At least the scientific community is still in a dilemma to embrace OA. This is what we find in our survey of researcher's attitude towards OA. There are many reasons ranging from lack of awareness, myths about OA and biasness towards traditional publishing model for prestige & recognition. We approached scientists of different research institutes and universities around Kolkata with different age groups in different ways. Interesting results have come out which clearly identified the major hurdles to adopt OA by scientific community in India.
Walking the Talk: A Multistakeholder Exploration of Organizational Authenticity, Employee Productivity, and Post-Merger Performance

Does consistency between how a firm treats employees (what it does) and its espoused employee-oriented values (what it says) affect employee productivity? Furthermore, given that the stakeholder theory perspective holds that what happens to one stakeholder influences other stakeholders, does this sort of consistency vis-a-vis a firm's customers also influence employee productivity? We empirically investigate the influence of organizational authenticity—defined as consistency between a firm's espoused values and realized practices—in the context of a merger, and specifically during post-merger integration. Our findings show that a lack of organizational authenticity in terms of both under-promising and over-promising to both employees and customers is associated with lower productivity, which in turn is related to long-term merger performance, thus affecting outcomes for shareholders. These findings support the importance of authenticity and should therefore be of interest to executives responsible for ens.
Contribution by primary health nurses and general practitioners to the Diabetes Annual Review (Get Checked) programme in Auckland, New Zealand.

AIM To describe primary health care (practice and specialist) nurses involvement in the government-funded annual diabetes review 'Get Checked' programme and the division of care between nurses and general practitioners in Auckland, New Zealand. METHOD Of the total 911 practice and specialist nurses identified and working in the greater Auckland region, 276 (30%) were randomly selected and invited to undertake a self-administered questionnaire and telephone interview in 2006-8. RESULTS An 86% response rate was achieved. Over 60% of practice nurses and over half of specialist nurses participate in 'Get Checked' reviews. Of those nurses, 40% of practice and 70% specialist nurses, reported completing over half of the total number of 'Get Checked' reviews at their practice. Of the nurses sampled who work in general practice (n=198), 38% reported that 'nurses mostly complete' the reviews, 45% stated that 'nurses and doctors equally complete' them and 17% reported that only 'doctors' did so. For the nurses who reported that 'nurses and doctors equally complete' the reviews (n=89), most nurses undertake blood pressure measurements (90%), weigh patients (88%), give lifestyle advice (87%), examine patient's feet (73%), and 44% carried out the complete review of the patients they consult. CONCLUSION These findings show the 'Get Checked' programme was successful in engaging practice and community-based specialist nurses in the community management of diabetes and has revealed positive relationships between nurses and doctors, extended roles for nurses and the importance of engaging nurses in the design of health care programmes.
Cleaning Up Without Clearing Out? A Spatial Assessment of Environmental Gentrification

The environmental gentrification hypothesis predicts that environmental quality improvements in poor communities may spur gentrification and the displacement of residents. The author analyzes the relationship between hazardous site cleanups and gentrification in Portland, Oregon, during the 1990s. Using resident-defined neighborhoods as the unit of analysis, the author finds that there is no relationship between the extent of gentrification a neighborhood experiences and the perceived or actual environmental improvement that precedes it. Based on this evidence, the author suggests that similar types of cities may be able to improve environmental conditions relatively equitably without exacerbating concerns related to gentrification and social justice.
The Carboxyl-terminal Sequence of the Human Secretory Mucin, MUC6

The distribution of MUC6 suggests that its primary function is protection of vulnerable epithelial surfaces from damaging effects of constant exposure to a wide range of endogenous caustic or proteolytic agents. A combination of genomic, cDNA. and 3′ rapid amplification of cDNA ends techniques was used to isolate the carboxyl-terminal end of MUC6. The 3′ nontandem repeat region contained 1083 base pairs of coding sequence (361 amino acids) followed by 632 base pairs of 3′-untranslated region. The coding sequence consists of two distinct regions; region 1 contained the initial 270 amino acids (62% Ser-Thr-Pro with no Cys residues), and region 2 contained the COOH-terminal 91 amino acids (22% Ser-Thr-Pro with 12% Cys). Although region 1 had no homology to any sequences in GenBank, region 2 had approximately 25% amino acid homology to the COOH-terminal regions of human mucins MUC2, -5, and -5B and von Willebrand factor. The shortness of region 2 would leave little of the peptide backbone exposed to a potentially hostile environment. Antibody studies suggest that MUC6 in its native form exists as a disulfide-bonded multimer. The conservation of the 11 cysteine positions in region 2 suggests the importance of this short region to mucin polymerization.
Forecasting Business Surveys Indicators: Neural Networks vs. Time Series Models

The objective of this paper is to compare different forecasting methods for the short run forecasting of Business Survey Indicators. We compare the forecasting accuracy of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) vs. three different time series models: autoregressions (AR), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and self-exciting threshold autoregressions (SETAR). We consider all the indicators of the question related to a country’s general situation regarding overall economy, capital expenditures and private consumption (present judgement, compared to same time last year, expected situation by the end of the next six months) of the World Economic Survey (WES) carried out by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in co-operation with the International Chamber of Commerce. The forecast competition is undertaken for fourteen countries of the European Union. The main results of the forecast competition are offered for raw data for the period ranging from 1989 to 2008, using the last eight quarters for comparing the forecasting accuracy of the different techniques. ANN and ARIMA models outperform SETAR and AR models. Enlarging the observed time series of Business Survey Indicators is of upmost importance in order of assessing the implications of the current situation and its use as input in quantitative forecast models.
Infections related to intrathecal baclofen therapy in children and adults: frequency and risk factors.

OBJECT The purpose of this study was to determine the frequency of infection and to identify risk factors for infection in connection with the implantation of an intrathecal baclofen (ITB) pump. METHODS This retrospective study included all pediatric and adult patients who received ITB at Rikshospitalet during the years 1999-2005. A database was created that included the following variables: patient age, sex, weight, diagnosis, surgical procedure performed, presence of a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube, urinary as well as fecal incontinence, anesthetist's classification of patient status (American Society of Anesthesiologists grade), timing of antibiotics administration, surgeon, assisting nurse, and surgical procedure time. Moreover, the mode of intrathecal screening trial (transcutaneous vs subcutaneous catheter insertion) and any complications were registered. The authors differentiated between deep and superficial infection, and they registered the causative agent. RESULTS A total of 163 patients received ITB; of these, 91 were pediatric patients (median age 10 years), and 72 were adults (median age 44 years). A total of 408 surgical procedures were performed. No infections occurred in direct relation to the screening trials. When a pump was implanted subsequent to a screening trial with transcutaneous catheter insertion, the rate of infection was 9% in the pediatric patients. The corresponding infection rate for pumps implanted after a screening trial with a subcutaneous distal catheter (Albright method) was 12%. This difference was not significant. There was a significantly higher incidence of deep infections following pump implantation in the pediatric group (p = 0.028) than in the adult group. The presence of a PEG tube increased the incidence of infection (p = 0.008) and may be one of the main reasons for a higher frequency of infections in children. When the patient suffered urinary and/or fecal incontinence, there was a higher chance of infection (p = 0.021). The surgical time was significantly longer in the pediatric group than in adults; however, the length of the surgical procedure had no impact on the occurrence of infection. The most common causative agent was Staphylococcus aureus; this microbe was responsible for 69% of deep infections. Also, 69% of deep infections occurred within 1 month after surgery. CONCLUSIONS The rate of infection is significantly higher in children undergoing ITB pump implantation than it is in adults. Screening trials applying the Albright method fail to reduce the frequency of infection subsequent to pump implantation. The presence of a PEG tube has the greatest significance as a predictor of infection.
Portfolios Effective Time Formation/Holding Period Based On Momentum Investment Strategy

This paper examines the momentum investment strategy based on past market information to evaluate performance, time formation/holding period and seasonality impact on the Canadian Market. In doing so, we assess the effectiveness of portfolio formation and holding periods of this strategy. Utilizing variant models of different methodologies, we find strong evidence that assesses a 9 month formation and a 9 month holding period as the most effective formation/holding period in implementing a Momentum Investment Strategy when the formation period begins in January. We also find that regardless of when the formation period begins, the most effective portfolio will be held for 9 months beginning in October. While these findings confirm the short term nature of this investment strategy, they however differ in terms of the length of formation/holding periods commonly utilized in the literature. The shortness of the actual effective formation/holding periods may be caused mainly by the growing knowledgeable participants in the market. Investors who base their portfolio construction on momentum investment strategy would achieve higher returns by shortening their portfolio formation/holding periods.