Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Insularity and the evolution of melanism, sexual dichromatism and body size in the worldwide‐distributed barn owl

Island biogeography has provided fundamental hypotheses in population genetics, ecology and evolutionary biology. Insular populations usually face different feeding conditions, predation pressure, intraspecific and interspecific competition than continental populations. This so‐called island syndrome can promote the evolution of specific phenotypes like a small (or large) body size and a light (or dark) colouration as well as influence the evolution of sexual dimorphism. To examine whether insularity leads to phenotypic differentiation in a consistent way in a worldwide‐distributed nonmigratory species, we compared body size, body shape and colouration between insular and continental barn owl (Tyto alba) populations by controlling indirectly for phylogeny. This species is suitable because it varies in pheomelanin‐based colouration from reddish‐brown to white, and it displays eumelanic black spots for which the number and size vary between individuals, populations and species. Females are on average darker pheomelanic and display more and larger eumelanic spots than males. Our results show that on islands barn owls exhibited smaller and fewer eumelanic spots and lighter pheomelanic colouration, and shorter wings than on continents. Sexual dimorphism in pheomelanin‐based colouration was less pronounced on islands than continents (i.e. on islands males tended to be as pheomelanic as females), and on small islands owls were redder pheomelanic and smaller in size than owls living on larger islands. Sexual dimorphism in the size of eumelanic spots was more pronounced (i.e. females displayed much larger spots than males) in barn owls living on islands located further away from a continent. Our study indicates that insular conditions drive the evolution towards a lower degree of eumelanism, smaller body size and affects the evolution of sexual dichromatism in melanin‐based colour traits. The effect of insularity was more pronounced on body size and shape than on melanic traits.
How positioning strategies affect co-branding outcomes

Abstract Co-branding is a widely applied strategy, with research indicating differential benefits to the parent brands. Past studies suggest the source of these differences may be due to the partners’ relative market position, and characteristics such as brand familiarity, brand equity and proximity to the consumer have been explored. However, the role of brand positioning has received little attention in the context of co-branding. The current study attempts to address this gap, considering the positioning of a brand and the impact of a co-branding strategy on customer perceptions. Using the Blankson and Kalafatis positioning typology, we explore the impact of co-branding on the parent brand perceptions from a hedonic vs. functional (utilitarian) focus. The results suggest that for hedonically oriented positioning strategies, fit between the brands is more important than fit between the product categories in driving positive brand perceptions. For a functionally oriented positioning strategy, the reverse holds, with product fit a more important factor than brand fit in driving post-alliance perceptions.
The changing pattern of lung carcinoma

In a study of 505 cases of lung carcinoma from a period in which there was a significant change in tobacco‐smoking habits, a dramatic shift in the histologic type and location of the lung tumors was observed. Peripheral tumors, found in 30.7% of the carcinomas occurring before 1978, were found in 42% of the carcinomas from 1986 to 1989. The corresponding decrease in the centrally originating bronchial carcinoma was from 69.3% to 57.3%. The greatest change in histologic cancer type was that the incidence of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma more than doubled from 9.3% in the earlier period to 20.3% percent in the 1986‐to‐1989 period. Corresponding to the decreasing incidence of lung carcinoma, there is a decrease in cancers related to cigarette smoking. A study of cases of lung carcinoma among nonsmokers and former smokers showed a decreased incidence of the bronchiogenic cancers and an increase of cancer occurring in the peripheral lung parenchyma. This finding should be validated in other population‐based studies, and if confirmed, new studies should be undertaken in an attempt to discover the factors that play a role in the development of such cancers. As an example, viral oncogenes may be a possibility. Viruses were suggested in the past as being related to the development of some of these tumor types.
The association between organizational climate and quality management practices: An empirical study on small-and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Taiwan

This study accesses the relationship between organizational climate and quality management practices of Taiwanese small-and medium-sized manufacturing companies. Two constructs are included in the questionnaire: organizational climate and critical factors of quality management practices. Our study shows that small-and medium-sized firms that tend to de-emphasize organizational structure appear to have a high-quality-tendency orientation.
Short-run Driver Response to a Gasoline Price Spike: Evidence from San Diego, CA

Drivers’ response to an unexpected gasoline price spike is examined using daily data from San Diego County. Elasticities of demand are calculated for the very short run and are compared to prior short run and long run elasticity estimates. Public transportation use is also examined and a cross-price elasticity for bus travel is estimated. The immediate effects of a gasoline price spike are found to be close to zero, but results are broadly consistent with prior short-run estimates after 10 days.
The κ-μ distribution and the η-μ distribution

This paper presents two general fading distributions, the kappa-mu distribution and the eta-mu distribution, for which fading models are proposed. These distributions are fully characterized in terms of measurable physical parameters. The kappa-mu distribution includes the Rice (Nakagami-n), the Nakagami-m, the Rayleigh, and the one-sided Gaussian distributions as special cases. The eta-mu distribution includes the Hoyt (Nakagami-q), the Nakagami-m, the Rayleigh, and the one-sided Gaussian distributions as special cases. Field measurement campaigns were used to validate these distributions. It was observed that their fit to experimental data outperformed that provided by the widely known fading distributions, such as the Rayleigh, Rice, and Nakagami-m. In particular, the kappa-mu distribution is better suited for line-of-sight applications, whereas the eta-mu distribution gives better results for non-line-of-sight applications.
On China’s Monetary Policy and Asset Prices

This paper investigates the dynamic and long-run relationships between monetary policy and asset prices in China using monthly data from June 2005 to September 2010. Johansen’s cointegration approach based on vector autoregression (VAR) and Granger causality test are used to identify the long-run relationships and directions of causality between asset prices and monetary variables. Empirical results show that monetary policies have little immediate effect on asset prices, suggesting that Chinese investors may be ‘irrational’ and ‘speculative’. Instead of running away from the market, investors rush to buy houses or shares whenever tightening monetary actions are taken. Such seemingly irrational and speculative behavior can be explained by various social and economic factors, including lack of investment channels, market imperfections, cultural traditions, urbanization and demographic changes. The results have two important policy implications. First, China’s central bank has not used and should not use interest rate alone to maintain macro-economic stability. Second, both monetary and non-monetary policies should be deployed when asset bubbles loom large to avoid devastating consequences when they burst.
Localism and the paradox of devolution: delegated citizen committees in Victoria, Australia

A central ideal in community localism is the notion of participatory devolution; that citizens ought to be engaged, supported and included in local decision-making. Community localism views participatory engagement as a vital ingredient in the quest to empower communities and enliven local democracy. Yet, critics argue that, in practice, many participatory initiatives inspired by community localism fail to empower citizens because they represent one-off consultation exercises with limited devolution of responsibility or control. This paper contributes to this debate by examining how participatory devolution is enacted in the messy world of local governance. It focuses on the use of a participatory mechanism that has received little attention in localism debates, the delegated citizen committee. These are committees composed of volunteer citizens who have formal devolved power to manage local assets, such as public halls or sporting fields, and, in some cases, to make decisions on broader policy issues. Drawing on the experiences of a local government in Victoria, Australia, the article asks what work do delegated citizen committees do? ; who participates? ; what issues do they affect? ; and how are they supported? The study finds that, in practice, many delegated citizen committees have devolved responsibility to perform managerial and administrative services, but, paradoxically, they have limited influence on the broader functioning of local democracy.
Testing for Negative Expected Market Return Premia

This paper adds to the literature on testing the hypothesis that the expected return premium on the market portfolio is always non-negative. The lower bound restriction is an important element in framing the case against a broad class of risk-based equilibrium models of market returns. Our goal is to merge powerful tests of the restriction, which include multiple information variables, with conservative bootstrapping that measures distance relative to the closest point in parameter space consistent with the null and a jack-knifing procedure that generates out-of-sample forecasts. We sharpen the inference achieved by incorporating multiple information variables into a single minimum expected value estimate, as this procedure can be appreciably more powerful than testing joint moment restrictions simultaneously as in Boudoukh, Richardson and Smith (1993). We find statistically reliable evidence against the non-negativity hypothesis for the excess return on the value weighted market index. The most negative, out-of-sample prediction was -2.21% in September 1973.
University Autonomy, the Professor Privilege and Academic Patenting: Italy, 1996–2007

Using data on patent applications at the European Patent Office, we search for trends in academic patenting in Italy, 1996–2007. During this time, Italian universities underwent a radical reform process, which granted them autonomy, and were confronted with a change in IP legislation, which introduced the professor privilege. We find that although the absolute number of academic patents has increased, (i) their weight on total patenting by domestic inventors has not, while (ii) the share of academic patents owned by universities has more than tripled. By means of a set of probit regressions, we show that the conditional probability to observe an academic patent has declined over time. We also find that the rise of university ownership is explained, significantly albeit not exclusively, by the increased autonomy of Italian universities, which has allowed them to introduce explicit IP regulations concerning their staff's inventions. The latter has effectively neutralized the introduction of the professor privilege.
Rethinking job satisfaction in care work: looking beyond the care debates

Studies of care workers frequently reveal relatively high levels of job satisfaction despite poor employment conditions. The rewarding nature of care work, altruistic motivations and gendered social norms have all been used to explain why subjective job satisfaction is high despite poor pay and terms and conditions. Using data collected in case-study research with domiciliary and residential care workers, this article offers a new direction for care worker research that contextualizes the taken-for-granted assumption that care workers tolerate poor pay and conditions because women find the work satisfying and intrinsically rewarding. The article draws on cultural analyses of class to offer an alternative framework that identifies the wider social processes that can shape care workers’ job satisfaction.
(Re)Viewing Ethnic Residential Segregation in Southern European Cities: Housing and Urban Regimes as Mechanisms of Marginalisation

Housing and residential marginalisation in Southern European cities represents the most critical and controversial of urban conditions for the settlement and inclusion of immigrants. However, these issues are conspicuously under-researched in both the international and Southern European comparative literature. The complexity of ethnic housing hardship and segregation is often de-problematised and misleadingly attributed solely to market mechanisms or inevitable polarisation dynamics. This paper reviews the distinctive features of ethnic residential segregation within wider societal and urban contexts, drawing on an analysis of eight Mediterranean cities with a special focus on the role of housing systems and processes of ethnic and social differentiation. Problems and drivers are reconceptualised within an holistic, comparative framework. It is demonstrated that low levels of ethnic spatial segregation conceal a real problem of social residential marginalisation. This paradox predominantly originates from macro-scale mechanisms of differentiation rooted in the welfare redistributive arrangements and dualist housing systems. It is additionally reinforced by current urban renewal strategies.
Can market size outweigh adverse comparative advantage?

This paper investigates the roles of comparative advantage and market size in the international location of manufacturing production. Building on the conventional Helpman and Krugman (1985) general equilibrium framework, our analysis extends the present literature by incorporating both effects in the same model, while allowing trade costs to vary almost continuously from autarky to free trade. The main result of our exercise is that market size effects offset comparative advantage if countries have similar factor proportions. A large country with a slight comparative disadvantage in manufacturing production may thus be a net exporter of manufactures. A small country with the same comparative disadvantage would be a net importer of manufactures. When countries are very dissimilar in their relative factor endowments, land-abundant countries specialize in the production of food, irrespective of market size, if manufactures are a labour-intensive sector. Labour-rich countries of any size are manufacture cores. However, land-abundant countries with large markets can sustain a domestic manufacturing industry until trade costs are very low, and in some cases only specialize in agriculture at free trade.
Economic cycles, times of change and sustainable tourism

“The times”, sang Bob Dylan in 1964, “they are a-changin”. Those wistful words may well be equally appropriate 45 years on. The long period of economic growth experienced in developed countries over recent years led many to think that the historically recurring economic cycles of boom and bust had perhaps ended. Easy credit, expanding consumption and increased leisure travel became a norm for many. Economic growth was widely taken for granted. As this editorial was finalised in November 2008, however, it seems that any obituaries written for the idea of business cycles, or of the cyclical crises of capitalism, were clearly premature. It is still early days, but the immediate economic prospects for much of the developed world appear to mirror the classic historical pattern of recession following on from a period of capital over-accumulation. Indeed, it now seems odd that people had thought that this recurring pattern would simply disappear. The latest assessment of the global economic outlook from the International Monetary Fund suggests that the major advanced economies are already in, or close to, recession. Activity in the advanced economies is now expected to contract on an annual basis in 2009, representing the first annual contraction during the postwar period, although the projected downturn is broadly comparable in magnitude to those that occurred in 1975 and 1982 (International Monetary Fund, 2008). There is also a notable international financial crisis, which itself is being described as the worst for decades. This financial crisis is widely seen as having been exacerbated by the deregulation of banking. The global nature of the financial world has clearly further spread the economic difficulties worldwide. Even China, with its massive reserves, is affected, its growth already slowing to a still remarkable 9% per annum. What are the likely implications of this change in global economic health for sustainable tourism? The danger is that increasing proportions of tourism businesses and private and public sector organisations may decide they lack the resources to invest in the infrastructure, facilities and training needed for more sustainable products, and the ability to pay for environmental or social enhancements. Instead, they may focus on the short term considerations of reducing costs and securing immediate financial returns. Such responses could have highly damaging consequences for sustainability. Yet, advocates of “ecological modernisation” contend that environmental goals can be secured while delivering business profits and economic growth, and presumably this might still apply in the less helpful context of a recession (Carter, 2007). The proponents of this approach suggest that competitive advantage and increased returns may be secured from producing high-value, high-quality and environmentally-friendly products. Further, businesses may benefit by reducing their costs through more efficient ecological practices, such as through energy-saving measures. Such cost savings may be even more appealing during an economic downturn.
Interobserver agreement in the classification of open fractures of the tibia. The results of a survey of two hundred and forty-five orthopaedic surgeons.

The system of Gustilo and Anderson for the classification of open fractures is commonly used as a basis for treatment decisions and for comparison of the published results of treatment. The reliability of this classification system was tested on the basis of the responses of 245 orthopaedic surgeons to a survey. The respondents were asked to provide data about their age, type of practice, and type of training; the number of open fractures of the tibia that they treated each year; and their use of the Gustilo-Anderson classification system. They were also asked to classify twelve open fractures of the tibia on the basis of a series of videotaped case presentations. Each case presentation on the color videotape included demographic data on the patient, a history of the injury, the results of the physical examination, the appearance and dimensions of the open wound before the operation, preoperative radiographs, and selected portions of the operative débridement with narration. The level of agreement for the classification of each fracture was determined according to the largest percentage of observers who chose a single classification type. The average agreement among the observers for all twelve fractures was 60 percent. The over-all agreement for each fracture ranged from 42 to 94 percent. The average agreement in the subgroup of surgeons who were considered to have the least experience (residents and fellows) was 59 per cent (range, 33 to 94 percent). (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Polymorphisms of drug-metabolizing enzymes CYP1A1, GSTT and GSTP contribute to the development of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma risk in the Saudi Arabian population

The last four decades have seen significant increase in the incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) as a possible result of increasing environmental carcinogens exposure. Based on the increasing evidence for the association between carcinogen-exposure-related cancer risk and xenobiotic gene polymorphisms, we have undertaken a hospital based case-control study on xenobiotic gene polymorphisms in Saudi individuals with a diagnosis of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Polymorphisms in five genes (CYP1A1, GSTT1, GSTP1, GSTM1, and NQO1) were characterized in 182 individuals with DLBCL and 513 normal controls using PCR-RFLP method. The CYP1A1*2C (p = 0.011, OR: 6.62, and 95% CI: 1.56 – 28.10), GSTT1 null (p ≤ 0.001, OR: 11.94, 95% CI: 7.88 – 18.12), and GSTP1 TT genotypes (p = 0.017, OR: 3.42, 95% CI 1.26 – 9.38) demonstrated significant association of DLBCL risk. None of the other alleles tested for proved to be significant indicators of DLBCL risk. Our findings suggest that polymorphisms of xenobiotic metabolizing enzyme genes may modify the individual susceptibility to develop DLBCL in Saudi Arabian population.
Screen Survival of Movies at Competitive Theaters: Vertical and Horizontal Integration in a Spatially Differentiated Market

This article empirically examines the effects of vertical integration and horizontal control on the exhibition of films at competing theaters in a market in which some theater owners are integrated into film distribution and others are not. It analyzes the duration of the exhibition runs of movies released by distributors who owned no theaters in Singapore during 2002 and 2003 through a survival model. The estimation shows that films released by these distributors are exhibited for shorter periods in distributor-owned theaters than in independently owned (i.e., unintegrated) theaters, and in theaters that belong to large theater chains than in the theaters of small theater chains. A spatial aspect of competition among theaters with different owners is revealed in the finding that a film is more likely to stay on at the theater at a given time when an adjacent rival theater still runs the same title. The increase in the probability of screen survival due to the spatial rivalry is greater the nearer the competing theater. These results are found when both film and theater-specific variations are controlled for.
On the Welfare Cost of Economic Fluctuations in Developing Countries

Macroeconomic fluctuations are much stronger in developing countries than in the United States. Yet, while a large literature debates the welfare cost of economic fluctuations in the United States, it remains an open question how large that cost is in developing countries. Using several models, we provide such a measure. We find that the welfare cost of consumption volatility per se is far from trivial and averages a substantial multiple of the corresponding U.S. estimate. Moreover, in many poor countries, the welfare gain from eliminating volatility may in fact exceed the welfare gain from an additional percentage point of growth forever. Copyright 2003 By The Economics Department Of The University Of Pennsylvania And Osaka University Institute Of Social And Economic Research Association.
Fairness and the Political Economy of Trade

This paper argues that, as a matter of positive political economy, fairness plays a non-trivial role in the politics of trade policy. Specifically, we first argue that, as a matter of fact, widely held notions of fairness, that are empirically identifiable on the micro level, have macro effects not only in the social and political spheres of life, but even in the economy. Furthermore, as we argue in the second section, these notions systematically constrain public officials in the construction and pursuit of trade policy.