Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dextromethorphan improves levodopa-induced dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease

Objective: This study assessed the effects of the N-methyl-D-aspartate(NMDA) antagonist dextromethorphan (DM) on levodopa-induced dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease (PD). Background: Recent experimental evidence suggests that increased synaptic efficacy of NMDA receptors expressed on basal ganglia neurons may play a role in the pathophysiology of levodopa-induced motor response complications. Methods: DM was given to six PD patients with motor fluctuations in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study. At the end of each 3-week study arm, patients received several brief IV levodopa infusions while parkinsonian symptoms and dyskinesias were frequently scored. Levodopa dose-response curves for antiparkinsonian and dyskinetic effects were then compared for each study arm. Results: With DM, average and maximum dyskinesia scores improved by >50%, without compromising the antiparkinsonian response magnitude or duration of levodopa, although in some subjects the levodopa threshold dose was slightly higher with DM than with placebo. Conclusions: These findings support the view that drugs acting to inhibit glutamatergic transmission at the NMDA receptors can ameliorate levodopa-associated dyskinesias.
Food industry, agriculture and rural economy responding to the infrastructure improvements in South Ostrobothnia

Abstract This paper studies the impacts of infrastructure improvements on agriculture and the food industry in the Finnish region of South Ostrobothnia. Simultaneously, the effects on the regional economy and its rural and urban parts are considered. The rural–urban Social Accounting Matrix depicts the economic structure of the region and serves as base data for a Computable General Equilibrium model. Two shocks: efficiency improvement of the transportation sectors and a cut of the transportation costs of all sectors were carried out. The results suggest that all the measures that intensify infrastructure are favourable for the food industry and agriculture in South Ostrobothnia such that on average these industries gained relatively higher benefits compared with the local industries. The results further indicate that especially the efficiency improvements of the transportation sectors boost the local economy. However, a decision needs to be made whether the attained benefits should be allocated to the urban centre and service sectors with higher total benefits to the region, or to the rural area and primary and exporting secondary sectors.
Summable Sequences Defined Over Real n-Normed Spaces ∗

The main aim of this article is to study subsets of real linear n-normed spaces consisting of strongly Cesàro summable and strongly lacunary summable sequences. Some standard facts as linearity, existence of norms and completeness with respect to these norms are investigated. Also some facts on equivalence of various norms on such constructed Banach spaces are presented, and we show that their topology can be fully described by using derived norm (norm). Further we investigate the relationship between the spaces and provide some examples and possible applications.
Constructing a multi-dimensional measure of local entrepreneurial culture

This article proposes a scale that measures the local entrepreneurial culture of a place based on residents’ perceptions. The initial 36-item pool was developed through semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs in Kentucky (USA) and then reviewed by a focus group composed of entrepreneurship coaches. These items were included in an extensive survey of rural and urban Kentuckians. Factor analysis resulted in a 17-item scale with four major components. To ascertain the predictive validity of the subscales, a series of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) models evaluated their correlations with county-level rates of entrepreneurship obtained from an independent data set. The analysis confirmed that perceptions of the local entrepreneurial culture do correlate with entrepreneurial activity. In line with the theoretical model presented in this article, the ANCOVAs also controlled for the modulating effect of important individual-level characteristics and regional factors. The proposed scale is recommended for use by entrepreneurship support programs that provide one-on-one assistance for small businesses, yet seldom assess nor consider how they might improve the entrepreneurial culture of the place where these businesses operate. Furthermore, this measure is an important contribution to entrepreneurship research. Existing measures of entrepreneurial culture focus mostly on the regional and national levels, overlooking the role of local cultural characteristics; they also tend to focus on general cultural attributes rather than on residents’ perceptions of the entrepreneurial climate. This entrepreneurship culture scale opens the door to new directions in research.
Rituximab plus subcutaneous cladribine in patients with extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue: a phase II study by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Medikamentöse Tumortherapie

Currently, there is no standard systemic treatment for extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of the mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue. Both rituximab and cladribine have shown some activity in this disease, but the combination has not been tested so far. In view of this, we initiated a phase II study to assess the activity and safety of rituximab and cladribine in patients with histologically verified mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. Treatment consisted of rituximab 375 mg/m2 i.v. day 1 and cladribine 0.1 mg/kg s.c. days 1 – 4 every 21 days. In case of complete remission after two courses, another two cycles of therapy were administered, while patients with a partial response or stable disease were scheduled to receive six cycles of treatment. Out of 40 evaluable patients (14 female, 26 male), 39 received treatment as scheduled while one patient died before initiation of therapy and was rated as having progressive disease in the intent-to-treat analysis. Twenty-one patients had gastric lymphoma, while 19 suffered from extragastric mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma. Side effects consisted mainly of hematologic toxicity including leukopenia, lymphopenia, anemia and thrombocytopenia. Twenty-three patients had a complete remission (58%) and nine had a partial remission (23%) for an overall response rate of 81%, while five had stable disease (13%) and two progressed during therapy. After a median follow-up of 16.7 months (interquartile range: 15.9 – 18.7 months), 35 patients are alive (88%) while four patients have died and one patient withdrew consent and did not allow further follow up. Our data demonstrate that rituximab plus cladribine is active and safe in patients with mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue lymphoma.
Detecting international tourism demand growth cycles

This paper investigates the existence of cycles within international tourism demand by spectral analysis of international tourist arrivals. A modern detrending method, i.e. the Hodrick–Prescott filter is used to extract the cycle series and a simple smoothing technique is used to mitigate irregularities. The results of spectral analysis finally confirm the existence of growth cycles within international tourism demand, and the paper is concluded with a brief discussion of findings.
Who Pays for National Defense? Financing Defense Programs in the United States, 1947-2007

Past studies on military expenditures in the United States have primarily focused on the extent to which guns versus butter trade-offs are prevalent without examining this relationship in the context of how other fiscal policy tools are used to pay for defense. Using annual data from 1947â€“2007, this study examines the relative importance of defense financing policy measures, such as guns versus butter trade-offs, tax increases, and deficit spending in paying for defense. The results show evidence of guns versus butter trade-off during the Reagan Era, but not during other periods. Both federal tax policy and deficit spending have played influential roles in funding defense spending during peacetime. This modeling strategy points to the importance of analyzing the effects of multiple fiscal policy tools when studying the forces that drive military spending in the United States since World War II.
Theory of Mind, Causal Attribution and Paranoia in Asperger Syndrome

Theory of mind (ToM) deficits are central to autistic spectrum disorders, including Asperger syndrome. Research in psychotic disorders has developed a cognitive model of paranoid delusions involving abnormal causal attributions for negative events. Possible aetiologies of these include deficits in social reasoning, specifically ToM. The present study investigated this attributional model of paranoia in Asperger syndrome. Participants diagnosed with Asperger syndrome scored significantly higher on a measure of paranoia and lower on a measure of ToM, compared with the control group. They did not differ in self-concept and causal attributions, contrary to the attributional model of paranoia. A regression analysis highlighted private self-consciousness as the only predictor of paranoia. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
Penalized Nonparametric Scalar-on-Function Regression via Principal Coordinates

Abstract A number of classical approaches to nonparametric regression have recently been extended to the case of functional predictors. This article introduces a new method of this type, which extends intermediate-rank penalized smoothing to scalar-on-function regression. In the proposed method, which we call principal coordinate ridge regression, one regresses the response on leading principal coordinates defined by a relevant distance among the functional predictors, while applying a ridge penalty. Our publicly available implementation, based on generalized additive modeling software, allows for fast optimal tuning parameter selection and for extensions to multiple functional predictors, exponential family-valued responses, and mixed-effects models. In an application to signature verification data, principal coordinate ridge regression, with dynamic time warping distance used to define the principal coordinates, is shown to outperform a functional generalized linear model. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
THE RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OF RANDSTAD CITIES WITHIN COMPARATIVE WORLDWIDE CORPORATE NETWORKS

Today, the importance of the Randstad agglomeration is often discussed in terms of the economic coherence between its four largest cities. This is remarkable when several leading authors argue that the economic importance of cities is strongly determined by economic networks between cities worldwide. This discrepancy stems from the fact that limited empirical research exists on corporate networks. Furthermore, the relative importance of cities within various studies is based on different functional types and spatial scales of data, making the results incomparable. Therefore, in this paper, the relative importance of the four largest Randstad cities is explored within three independent, comparative networks (top 100 global firms, top 100 European firms, and top 100 Dutch firms). Employing network analysis techniques, this paper evaluates the local, supra-regional and global importance of the four Randstad cities within the three independent networks. The results show that the relative importance and network structures of these four cities are highly dependent on the economic size and locality of the initial headquarters and that Amsterdam proves to be the most important Randstad city in all three scales of corporate networks. Copyright (c) 2009 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.
Pensions in Nigeria: The Performance of the New System of Personal Accounts

In 2004, Nigeria copied the 1981 Chilean pension reform and established a funded system based upon personal accounts. The new system was neither appropriate for a country such as Nigeria, nor did it meet aspirations of improving pension coverage or helping economic growth. The current financial and economic crisis hit the scheme in so far as it hit stock values. However, more important has been the negative real interest rates that can be earned on government bonds and on bank deposits — where the majority of contributions are invested. Bank scandals and rising fiscal deficits do not breed confidence in the system or the government's ability to deliver meaningful benefits in old age.
New Labour Ambiguity, or Neo-liberal Consistency? The Debate About Racial Inequality in Employment and the Use of Contract Compliance

In 2003 the UK government set an objective that in ten years' time Britain's minority ethnic groups should not face disproportionate barriers in the labour market. A key ‘barrier’ is discrimination by employers. This article examines one potential way forward: the use of contract compliance. First, the article presents findings from the authors' study of an innovative use of contract compliance by a group of local authorities in the West Midlands. If contract compliance can be made to work and New Labour is committed to addressing racial inequality in employment, this suggests that contract compliance is an approach that the government should be seeking to develop. The second part of the article therefore considers New Labour's stance on contract compliance, which can be seen to be highly ambiguous. It is argued that if contract compliance is located within the broader context of New Labour policy development, what is apparent is that the professed aspiration for social change is compromised by a dominant commitment to the maintenance of neo-liberal economic policies. The conclusion is that it is likely that only limited progress will be made in achieving racial equality in employment.
Information and Volatility: The No-Arbitrage Martingale Approach to Timing and Resolution Irrelevancy

No-arbitrage martingale analysis is used to study the effect of changes in the rate of information flow on asset prices. The analysis is first used to develop some simple tools for asset pricing in a continuous time setting. These tools are then applied to determine the effect of information on prices and price volatility, to extend Samuelson's theorem on prices fluctuating randomly, and to study the impact of the resolution of uncertainty on prices. The conditions under which uncertainty resolution is irrelevant for asset pricing are shown to be similar to those that support the Modigliani and Miller irrelevance theorems. Copyright 1989 by American Finance Association.
The Impact of State Governance Structures on Higher Education Resources and Research Activity

Universities in the United States reside in regions that have different political cultures and economic conditions. While these facts and the reputation of the university play an important role in determining the features of university performance, the role of state governance of public universities also is an important factor. Over the past two decades state governments have given considerable attention to state governance issues, resulting in many universities operating in a more regulated setting today. We explore whether the governance structure affects the resources allocated and the activities undertaken by universities. This paper develops a classification of higher education structures and shows the effects of these structures using a data set that covers the period 1987 to 1997. The analysis suggests that, for most of the measures, productivity and resources are higher at universities with a statewide board that is more decentralized and with members that are not primarily appointed by the governor.
Improving Governance from the Outside In

The variation in the efficacy of governance-related authority structures is stunning. The focus among scholars primarily on domestic conditions, and only secondarily on the external environment, to explain patterns of political development conforms to the prevailing assumptions of comparativists, international relations scholars, and international lawyers. Over the past decade, however, some scholars have studied the possibility that political institutions within states can be influenced or determined not only by internal factors and the external environment but also by the explicit policies of foreign actors. An emerging body of scholarship examines the efficacy of different policy tools that external actors might use to change the structure of domestic institutions in target states. We review this literature and reach the following conclusions. First, contracting often works, coercion sometimes works, and imposition rarely works. Second, the motivation of initiators matters: to be effective, intervening.
The M-Vector Model: Derivation and Testing of Extensions to M-Square

This article derives and tests a multiple-factor extension of the M-square model (see Fong and Vasicek [1984] and Fong and Fabozzi [1985]), termed as the M-vector model. Tests of the M-square model indicate that the model reduces the interest rate risk inherent in the traditional duration model by more than half. The M-vector model demonstrates near-perfect hedging performance, eliminating more than 95% of interest rate risk inherent in the traditional duration model.
Social institutional dynamics of seed system reliability: the case of oil palm in Benin

Seed system reliability is of major importance in farming. Whereas earlier studies analysed mainly annuals, this study focuses on a perennial. Oil palm in Benin was chosen as a case study because farmers complained about non-hybrids (dura and pisifera) in plots allegedly planted with 100% hybrid (tenera). This study assessed the reliability of the oil palm seedling supply system over past decades and its main drivers. An event ecology approach was used to identify causal mechanisms accounting for the observed variation in oil palm types on smallholder plots. A total of 378 plots belonging to 248 farmers that were allegedly planted with tenera between 1969 and 2009 were sampled, and shell thickness of fruits was assessed to determine whether palms were tenera, pisifera, or dura. The proportion of tenera varied with seedling supply source, farmers' geographic position, seedling purchase price, and year of planting. The proportion of tenera decreased with year of planting. Socio-institutional mechanisms associated with the observed variation in smallholder plots were national policy change, local arrangements for seedling supply to smallholder farmers, and farmers' personal characteristics. The implications of the observed decrease in the reliability of the seedling supply system are discussed.
Multiple Access with Low-Density Signatures

We present sets of spreading sequences that are specifically designed to suit a belief-propagation multiuser detection structure, recently presented for overloaded system scenarios. On one hand, our sequences are of the low-density type; on the other their distance spectrum properties ensure good performance in AWGN channels. Simulations results for raw and coded bit-error probability indicate that significant performance gain is achieved over random sequences and that the loss compared to the single-user bound can be kept small.
The Effect of Sharing a Common Auditor with Customers on Accounting Restatements by Supplier Firms

We examine whether firms that share an auditor with at least one of their major customers are less likely to make accounting restatements compared to firms that do not have such links with their customers. Based on a sample of 4,808 firm-year observations during the period over 20002009, we find evidence supporting this prediction. We also show that this common auditor effect is mainly driven by firms with lower institutional ownership or fewer analysts following, firms whose auditors have shorter tenure and cases where common auditors come from the same practice office or from offices located in close geographic proximity. Furthermore, this common auditor effect is more pronounced when suppliers have greater bargaining power over their customers. Interestingly, we find no significant difference in the common auditor effect between restatements involving accounting irregularities and those related to errors. Lastly, the common auditor effect does not merely reflect enhanced industry wide knowledge from auditing the supplier and the major customer from the same industry. Overall our study highlights an important channel through which auditors obtain useful information in improving the quality of an audit.
VERDICT: The Verapamil versus Digoxin Cardioversion Trial: A Randomized Study on the Role of Calcium Lowering for Maintenance of Sinus Rhythm after Cardioversion of Persistent Atrial Fibrillation

Verapamil and Atrial Fibrillation. Introduction: Many relapses of atrial fibrillation (AF) occur, especially during the first week(s) after electrical cardioversion (ECV). The aim of the present study was to compare in a randomized design the efficacy of verapamil (intracellular calcium lowering) versus digoxin (calcium increasing) for maintenance of sinus rhythm after ECV.
The Market Model and Capital Asset Pricing Theory: A Note

This note shows that a linear market model is sufficient to derive a linear relationship between beta and expected return. Furthermore, the slope of the relationship will be identical with that of the Capital Asset Pricing Model if the return on the market portfolio is normally distributed. However, results from characterization theory suggest that the linear market model assumption is close to that of multivariate normality. THE MARKET MODEL, a common specification of the return-generating process for common stocks, holds a central place in financial economics. This note shows that a linear market model implies the security market line associated with the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) of Sharpe [18], Lintner [6], and Mossin [9]. However, the distributional assumptions implicit in the linear market model are such that the generalization achieved is slight. Results from characterization theory are used to show that when a linear market model with homoscedastic errors holds for each stock, multivariate normality is implied. The results in this note have implications for the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) of Ross ([12], [13]) and Roll and Ross [11]. In Ross [13], where a single factor model is proposed with the return on the market as the factor, a large numbers argument is used which allows the derivation of the security market line "without the additional baggage of mean variance theory. " However, given similar assumptions, we show here that the same relationship can be derived without the approximation implicit in the APT argument.
Effect of Consumer Demographic Attributes on Store Choice Behaviour in Food and Grocery Retailing - An Empirical Analysis

The paradigm shift in consumerís socio-economic, demographic, geographic and psychographic dimensions has changed the face of Indian food and grocery retailing. The present paper endeavours to make a detailed study on the association and predictability of consumerís demographic dimensions towards supermarket store format choice behaviour in food and grocery retailing. The study is purely based on primary data collected from 1040 retail customers from forty different food and grocery supermarket stores through mall intercept technique using structured and non-disguised questionnaire in twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad in Andhrapradesh. The descriptive statistical tools (percentiles mean standard deviation and cross tabulations) and inferential statistical tools (Chi-square, Correlations, Regressions, and ANOVA) were used to test the formulated hypotheses. It was found that customersí age, monthly household income, family size, distance travelled to store, gender, education and occupation have been the significant predictors of store choice behaviour. Various managerial and marketing implications are elaborately discussed in this paper.