Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reform narratives and argumentative coupling in German pension policy: constructing the ‘deserving retiree’

ABSTRACT German pension policy experienced a shift in the early 2000s, when public pensions were cut back, the retirement age raised, and private, publicly subsidized pension provision stipulated. Within a coherent reform narrative, those reforms were grounded on arguments of a ‘demographic time bomb’, a no-longer-affordable public pension scheme, and the return potential of private pension funds. Yet this narrative was delegitimized quickly with zero-rate-policy, and increasing old-age poverty in a lean public pension scheme. In such a situation, it can be expected difficult to either adapt the old narrative or construct new ones. This makes an interesting case for this article to study reform narratives and argumentative coupling in recent German pension policy through two contrasting cases: A failed attempt at establishing a minimum-pension scheme; and a ‘successful’ reform package combining a ‘mothers’ pension’ and exceptions for a full pension at age 63. Findings illuminate how the contrasting success of those reform proposals can be understood in terms of narrative stories: The reform which – political-strategically – could build on the ‘deservingness’ of the target groups could be agreed upon comparatively easily. Possible beneficiaries of a minimum pension are of varying ‘deservingness’, though, and narrating a more ‘problem-solving’ story has proven difficult.
The role of the state in China’s post-disaster reconstruction planning: Implications for resilience

Rooted in natural and engineering sciences, the concept of resilience has attracted growing attention in social science and public policy. The evolving resilience paradigm assumes the concept is at odds with state control, and instead emphasises the coping capacities of communities and individuals. This assumption might overlook the multifaceted and context-specific nature of resilience. Drawing on an empirical study of state-led reconstruction planning, this article argues that it is the deep and active involvement of the state, rather than its retreat, that helps promote resilience building in China’s earthquake-hit areas. Through a combination of online questionnaire survey and interviews, the article assesses how the Chinese state mobilises and coordinates a wide range of state and non-state actors to enable communities to achieve different aspects of resilience, while also sometimes constraining them from doing so.
Refugees, Civil Society and the State: European Experiences and Global Challenges

‘Overall, the book is a good resource for anyone academically interested in refugee mobility, the EU’s response to the migration events of 2015 and to civil society’s reaction. e author has an eloquent writing style that makes the book easy to read including the sections providing legal and institutional background information. erefore, the book soundly addresses a wide audience composed of students and academics from di erent disciplines in the social sciences. ’ – Müge Dalkıran, Border Criminologies Blog
PTSS in fathers of VLBW infants two to four years postpartum: A pilot study.

Aim: The aim of the study was to conduct a pilot study to compare fathers of very low birth weight (VLBW; <1,500 g) infants and term infants at 2- 4 years postpartum for self-reported posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) related to the previous birth of their baby and for depression and anxiety. The prevalence of paternal PTSS was compared with that of a historical cohort of mothers of VLBW infants followed up at a similar postnatal age. Method: Twenty-six fathers of VLBW infants and 22 fathers of term infants completed 4 validated psychological questionnaires at 2- 4 years postpartum. Results: PTSS levels were significantly higher in fathers of VLBW infants than in fathers of term infants, and PTSS levels did not differ significantly between fathers and the mothers of VLBW infants of a historical cohort. There was a significant association between perceived levels of social support and PTSS severity in fathers of VLBW infants but not for their anxiety or depression severity. Conclusion: PTSS directly related to the birth of their VLBW infants are present in fathers at 2- 4 years postpartum and occur at similar levels to those found in mothers of VLBW infants. Routine screening for PTSS in fathers of VLBW infants is important, and targeted psychological support should be offered. Larger-scale studies in the area are needed to elucidate further information about PTSS in fathers postpartum.
Effectiveness of Teacher Education Programmes in Developing Teaching Skills for Secondary Level.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of secondary school teacher education programme in terms of development of selected teaching skills and suggesting ways and means to improve the programme. The population of the study comprised of the pre-service teachers of all the government colleges of education for men and women in Punjab. The sample consisted of 80 out of 975 prospective teachers from two colleges of education Lahore. The observational technique was used. Observations were made by 23 (12 male and 11 female) trained observers using observation scale. Data relevant to five teaching skills were collected and analyzed. It was observed that the teaching skills “Clarity in the classroom”, “Variety in the Classroom”, and “Task orientation in the Classroom” are exhibited by only twenty percent of the pre-service teachers. However the level of these skills is low even in these pre-service teachers. The skill “Engagement in the classroom” could be developed in only six percent of prospective teachers. The skill, “students’ success” was developed in twenty eight percent of these teachers. It was recommended that teaching learning materials of skills may be developed and provided to prospective teachers.
Implications of modern technology development for the tourism sector of the Republic of Serbia

Tourism is often defined as an economic sector that deals with innovation and production of tourism products and services. It is a very complex economic sector, since tourism products and stakeholders are constantly changing due to changing external forces. Therefore, development and progress of information and communication technology have had an enormous impact on tourism as well as on other sectors of the economy associated with it. Over the years, the use of modern technology in tourism has been expanded to provide a wider range of products and services to tourists all over the world, and is a key determinant of competitiveness in this sector. The subject of this paper is a look at the implications of modern technology for the tourism sector of the Republic of Serbia and the ways in which it contributes to increasing competitiveness. The analysis relies on the World Economic Forum methodology for the presentation of competitiveness of the travel and tourism sector, namely the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index. The aim of the paper is to examine the degree of contribution of ICT readiness pillar to the competitiveness of the tourism sector in the Republic of Serbia.
Are global tropical cyclones moving slower in a warming climate?

The local tropical-cyclone-related rainfall totals largely depend on the rain rate near the center and the translation speed of a tropical cyclone. Understanding how they respond to a changing climate has been a hot topic. A recent astounding study reported a 10% slowdown in global tropical-cyclone translation speed over the past 68 years (1949–2016) and implicitly related this to the weakening of tropical circulation forced by the anthropogenic warming. It thereby suggested that it might result in more local rainfall totals in a warming climate. However, here this study shows that no robust and significant observational and modeling evidences reveal that they are. The data artefacts introduced by the changes in measurement practices, particularly the introduction of satellite capabilities since the 1970s, are likely the main source of heterogeneities leading to such disagreement. The global slowdown of tropical-cyclone translation speed becomes indeterminate and a significant global speedup trend is even found over land if the records in more reliable satellite sensing era period starting from 1970 are examined, where this period is also the most pronounced warming period in the last half-century. The relationship between the slowdown of tropical cyclones and anthropogenic warming is therefore not apparent and the relevant potential increase in local rainfall totals in the future warming climate is suspicious.
Distributed control and optimisation of complex networks via their Laplacian spectra

In complex networked systems, the structure of the underlying communication between individual agents can have profound impacts on the performance and dynamics of the system as a whole. For example, processes such as consensus can occur at faster or slower rates depending on the structure of the communication graph, and the synchronisation of coupled chaotic oscillators may be unachievable in one configuration, when it is achievable in another. As such, it is vital for agents within a complex networked system to be able to make estimates of the properties of the network as a whole, and be able to direct their own actions to modify these properties in a desirable way, even when they are only able to communicate with their direct neighbours, and have no global knowledge of the structure of the network. In this thesis we explore decentralised strategies by which individual agents in a network can make estimates of several functions of the graph Laplacian matrix eigenvalues, and control or optimise these functions in a desired manner, subject to constraints. We focus on the following spectral functions of the graph Laplacian matrix, which determine or bound many interesting properties of graphs and dynamics on networks: the algebraic connectivity (the smallest non-zero eigenvalue), the spectral radius (the largest eigenvalue), the ratio between these extremal eigenvalues (also known as the synchronisability ratio), the total effective graph resistance (proportional to the sum of the reciprocals of non-zero eigenvalues), and the reduced determinant (the product of the non-zero eigenvalues).
Teaching Practice and Mentoring: The Key to Effective Literacy, Language, and Numeracy Teacher Training

This guide identifies good practice in relation to mentoring in initial training, and offers advice on how to achieve it. Following the recent report on initial teacher training which specifically identified mentoring support for teaching practice as a general weakness across most programmes,this timely book suggests ways of supporting mentors more effectively, partnership working, strategic planning, training, professional development,the provision of materials and resources. It argues that mentors should key members of the teams delivering teacher training programmes,based in different provider organisations, and demonstrates the value regionally-managed systems for building and maintaining ? communities practice? through professional networks for trainers and mentors.
Libraries as agents for development: The potential role of Egyptian rural public libraries towards the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals based on the UN 2030 Agenda

The key purpose of this study is to investigate the potential role of Egyptian rural public libraries, being one of the social agents for development, towards the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals according to the United Nations Agenda for 2030. To meet the objectives and questions of the study, a multi-faceted research methodology was adopted and conducted in the period from September to November 2017. The study used a qualitative approach in terms of personal interview, discussion and observations of group meetings, and examination of documents to investigate the implementation of community development programmemes and services in 34 rural public libraries representing the four main administrative divisions comprising Egypt. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals have been discussed with ways in which Egyptian rural public libraries can include and meet them. Challenges facing libraries in the provision of information (poor infrastructure, inappropriate collections and related facilities and services, high levels of illiteracy, lack of funding and cooperation between related agencies, inappropriate training of library and information professionals, lack of studies and surveys, as well as analyses of information needs of rural communities) have also been emphasized. This study concluded that Egyptian rural public libraries have struggled to be part of the United Nations Agenda for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. They have tried as much as possible to integrate and adapt to the surrounding community in light of the common economic, political and social factors and conditions. Despite these challenges, these libraries showed a good response that is characterized as somewhat positive, though not sufficient, toward the achievement of these goals.
Representation of Minority Students in Special Education: Complicating Traditional Explanations

problem that was officially acknowledged 38 years ago but has been largely ignored by researchers and practitioners in general education, namely, the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education (National Research Council [NRC], 2002; Dunn, 1968). The scholarship presented in this theme issue forces us to grapple with fundamental questions about how to respond to cultural differences in education. For example, if the creation of special education was a civil rights victory in addressing the needs of students with disabilities, why do we deem it a problem if minority students are disproportionately served in these programs? Indeed, the disproportionate representation of minority students in special education is an opportunity to explore larger questions about the opportunities and challenges associated with the education of students in a pluralistic society. The articles in this special issue represent efforts by the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt, see www.nccrest.org) to achieve three key goals (Klingner et al., 2005), described in the three sections that follow.
Evaluating KM Journal Content: An Assessment of Trends (2000-2005)

Abstract : Knowledge management (KM) has been receiving ever increasing attention from researchers and practitioners, especially over the last 5 years. Consequently, some researchers and practitioners now believe that KM should be its own discipline and have established KM-specific journals in an effort to further this idea. Many of these journal founders believe that KM has emerged as a mixture of many disciplines and have written the goal of being interdisciplinary into their charters. This research reviews the KM literature published in KM-specific journals from 2000 to 2005. Specifically, using a content analysis methodology, this research reviews and analyzes the body of KM literature in KM-specific journals to determine what the body of literature "looks like. " The results of this analysis also are used to compare the body of literature for KM-specific journals to that of the leading information systems (IS) journals for the same time period. Lastly, this approach is used to ascertain whether KM-specific journals are meeting their interdisciplinary goal. The results from this research indicate that, although the coverage of KM focus topics within KM-specific journals is fairly evenly distributed, the KM focus topic of knowledge transfer has been receiving the greatest amount of attention by researchers and practitioners contributing to these journals. Additionally, the comparison of the two bodies of literature (KM and IS) shows that they are similar in their coverage of the KM focus topics spectrum. Lastly, the significant number of disciplines found contributing to KM-specific journals indicates that these journals are, indeed, interdisciplinary.
CDS-Bond Basis Dynamic and Credit Spread Price Discovery: A Test for European Corporate and Sovereign Bond Markets

This work analyzes the possible links between CDS premiums and bond spreads, with reference to both Eurozone sovereign and corporate markets, within the period 2011-2018. The main goal of this work is to provide more up-to-date results about the theoretical equivalence between the CDS premium and the credit spread of the underlying bond, and about the price discovery process of the credit risk between the CDS market and the bond market. While, theoretically, the CDS-bond basis must tend to zero, the analysis on all the considered markets has shown that it results to be constantly away from parity and, more specifically, positive on average. The analysis of the price discovery process of the credit risk between the CDS market and the bond market, analyzed by means of the VAR and VECM models, confirms the leader role of bond spreads for almost all the analyzed entities. These evidence could be useful for arbitrageurs, who want to take advantage of potential market inefficiencies, and for regulators interested in guaranteeing the financial system stability through timely and correct inclusion of all available information in the security prices, avoiding any adverse selection issue.
Impact of Frame Duration and Modulation Coding Schemes With WiMAX Bandwidth Asymmetry in Transmission Control Protocol Variants

WiMAX stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access which is based on IEEE 802.16 specification and is considered as de facto standard for the broadband wireless data transfer over the internet. The different values of various WiMAX parameters for different TCP variants may affect the performance of the network. This article compares the performance of different TCP variants with bandwidth asymmetry, frame duration, and modulation coding schemes, along with the operating parameter namely number of wireless nodes. During the simulation study the performance was evaluated only for one-way data transfer. The finding suggests that the TCP New Reno performed better than other variants included in the simulation study for the comparison. The performance was measured on the basis of throughput, goodput and packets dropped.
A History of Econometrics

Introduction. The Discovery of `Higher Statistics' in Economic Research. The Emergence of Structural Estimation. The Historical Context of Structural Estimation. Promises and Problems of Structural Estimation. Contemporary Alternatives to Simultaneous Equations Estimation. Exogeneity. Vector Autoregressions. Conclusion. Bibliography. Indexes.
Abstract 15515: Adverse Cardiovascular Effects of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders and Their Treatments on Heart Rate Variability. The Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil): A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Baseline Characteristics

Background: The effects of the mood and anxiety disorders, and their treatments on vagally-mediated cardiovascular function remain unclear. Resting-state heart rate (HR) and its variability (HRV) are psychophysiological markers of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, mediated by the vagus nerve, which plays a major role in the regulation of cytokine activity. We hypothesised that HR will be increased and HRV, decreased in these disorders. We also sought to determine the impact of antidepressant treatments. We further examined the impact of additional confounding variables including age, sex, physical activity, metabolic syndrome and coronary heart disease on findings. Methods: The ELSA-BRASIL cohort includes a total of 15,105 participants. The Clinical Interview Schedule - Revised was used to obtain diagnoses of mood and anxiety disorders. HR as well as the square root of the mean squared difference of successive NNs (RMSSD) and high frequency HRV - commonly employed and stable measures of HRV - were extracted from a 10-minute supine electrocardiogram recording for analysis. Results: Patients with mood and anxiety disorders displayed elevated HR, although effect sizes were small (p
Hemodynamic and hemostatic effects of erythropoietin therapy

• A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publisher's website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.
Seasonality, Risk and Return in Daily Comex Gold and Silver Data 1982-2002

This study examines seasonality in the conditional and unconditional mean and variance of daily gold and silver contracts over the 1982–2002 periods. Using COMEX cash and futures data, we find that the evidence is weak for the mean but strong for the variance. There appears to be a negative Monday effect in both gold and silver, across cash and futures markets. Within a GARCH framework we find that the Monday seasonal does not disappear, indicating that it is not a risk-related artefact, the Monday dummy in the variance equations being significant also. No evidence of an ARCH-in-Mean effect is found.
Managerial Entrenchment and Capital Structure: The Effect of Diversification

Abstract This paper empirically examines how diversification influences the relation between corporate governance and capital structure. Consistent with the creditor alignment hypothesis, we find a positive relation between managerial entrenchment and leverage in diversified firms. In contrast, we find a negative relation between managerial entrenchment and leverage in focused firms, which supports the managerial entrenchment hypothesis. These effects are stronger or only exist in samples with low excess values, which supports the agency channel through which governance influences leverage decisions. Our results are robust to different measures of leverage, diversification, and governance, and continue to hold when we attempt to account for selection bias and the joint endogeneity of leverage, diversification, and governance.
The Influence of Global Brand Distribution on Brand Popularity on Social Media

The literature on consumer choice between global and local brands is focused on sales-based measures of brand globalness (BG). When managers need to establish an effective social media campaign to raise awareness of their brands’ activities on social media, the literature focus may not provide clear guidance on how such measures can be applied to social media. This research contributes to global brand research by combining the literature streams on consumer social media engagement and global branding marketing strategies. First, to provide a managerial tool for this task, the authors propose two novel measures, BG and country brand popularity (CBP), based on consumers’ brand activities on social media. Using these measures, the authors hypothesize that CBP is influenced by cultural, social, and economic factors, which is motivated by motivation–opportunity–ability theory. Using Facebook data covering the top 100 brands that operate across 50 countries in each of 51 industries, they show that CBP is influenced by BG and cultural, social, and economic characteristics.