Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Working Papers on International Economics and Finance DEFI 1506 April 2015 On the bi-directional causal relationship between public debt and economic growth in EMU countries

New evidence is presented on the possible existence of bi-directional causal relationships between public debt and economic growth in both central and peripheral countries of the European Economic and Monetary Union. We test for heterogeneity in the bi-directional Granger-causality across both time and space during the period between 1980 and 2013. The results suggest evidence of a “diabolic loop” between low economic growth and high public debt levels in Spain after 2009. For Belgium, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands debt has a negative effect over growth from an endogenously determined breakpoint and above a debt threshold ranging from 56% to 103% depending on the country.
The Financial Power of the Powerless : Socio-Economic Status and Interest Rates under Weak Rule of Law

In advanced economies interest rates vary inversely with the borrower’s socio-economic status, which itself depends inversely on default risk. These relationships depend on the impartiality of the law. Where the law is markedly biased in favour of certain groups, the latter will pay a surcharge for A cc ep te d A rt ic le This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. capital. Legal power, as measured by privileges before the law, thus undermines financial power, the capacity to borrow cheaply. Developing this argument, this paper also tests it through judicial records from Ottoman Istanbul, 1602-1799. Three privileged Ottoman groups—men, Muslims, and titled elites— all paid relatively high interest rates conditional on various loan characteristics.
Species Composition and Diversity in Mid-altitudinal Moist Temperate Forests of the Western Himalaya

The present study was undertaken in middle altitudinal (1500 to 2500 masl) moist temperate forest of Mandal-Chopta area in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand, India. The aim of the present study was to assess the variation in species composition and diversity in different vegetation layers viz. herb, shrub and tree, at different altitudes. Shannon-Wiener diversity index (  ), Nha -1 , total basal cover per hectare (G), Simpson concentration of dominance, Pielou Equitability, species richness (SR), Margalef index, Menheink index of species richness and β-diversity were calculated to understand community composition. Tree G ranged from 84.25 to 35.08 m 2 ha -1 and total stem density varied from 990 to 1470 Nha -1 . Total SR (herb, shrub and trees) among different forest types ranged between 31 and 58. Maximum G of herb and shrub layers was recorded at lower altitudes between 1500 and 1650 masl. β-diversity was higher in herb layers as compared to tree and shrub layers. Dominance-diversity curves were also drawn to ascertain resource apportionment among various species in different forest types. Values of species diversity,  , Nha -1 and G were higher in the study area as compared to similar forests growing in other parts of Uttarakhand Himalaya.
Improving Water Use Efficiency for a Sustainable Productivity of Agricultural Systems Using Subsurface Drip Irrigation

The sustainability of agricultural production depends on conservation and appropriate use and management of scarce water resources especially in arid and semi-arid areas where irrigation is required for the production of food and cash crops. The objective of this paper was to evaluate the effects of surface and subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) at 5, 20 and 35 cm depths on water's dynamic in soil (Soil moisture distribution, water's stock in soil and irrigation water use efficiency) to produce maize in semiarid climates. Field study was conducted at the Higher Institute of Agronomy of Chott Meriem, Tunisia. The results indicated that soil moisture content under subsurface drip irrigation at 35 cm (T3) depth was more uniform compared to 5 cm (T1) and 20 cm (T2). Moreover, irrigation water use efficiency was higher in this treatment. Indeed, it increased about 18%, 14% and 7% for T3, T2 and T1, respectively when compared with surface drip irrigation. The results of the present study showed that SDI allows uniform soil moisture, minimize the evaporative loss and delivery water directly to the plant root zone and consequently increases use efficiency. Further research is needed in order to determine whether corn production with SDI is feasible in the arid region.
, The Potential of Avocado Leaves (Persea Americana Mill) as Antibacterial

Background: Excessive microorganisms can disturb the body's balance and cause infection. Infectious disease is a major health problem that occurs in several countries, especially Indonesia. Antibiotics are the main drug of choice used in dealing with infectious diseases. Irrational use of antibiotics can cause antibiotic resistance problems. This causes people to choose alternative or traditional medicine as a treatment for infectious diseases. One type of plant that can be used as traditional medicine is the Avocado Plant (Persea americana mill). Avocado plant parts that can be used as medicine are avocado leaves. The existence of secondary metabolites, namely alkaloids, flavoniods, tannins, and saponins on avocado leaves can inhibit the growth of bacteria (antibacterial) Objective: find out more about the potential of avocado leaves as an antibacterial. Method: The method used by the author is the study of literature from various national and international journals. This method is used with the aim of presenting, increasing knowledge and understanding of the topics covered by summarizing the material that has been published and providing information on facts or new analysis from the review of relevant literature then comparing the results in the article. Results: Avocado leaves have the ability to inhibit the growth of bacteria (antibacterial). Conclusion: Avocado (Persea americana mill) leaves have potential as an antibacterial. That is because the content of secondary metabolites found in avocado leaves. Secondary metabolites that have mechanisms to inhibit bacteria on avocado leaves are flavonoids, alkaloids, tannins and quersetins.
Named Entity rEcognition and Linking

The large number of tweets generated daily is providing decision makers with means to obtain insights into recent events around the globe in near real-time. The main barrier for extracting such insights is the impossibility of manual inspection of a diverse and dynamic amount of information. This problem has attracted the attention of industry and research communities, resulting in algorithms for the automatic extraction of semantics in tweets and linking them to machine readable resources. While a tweet is shallowly comparable to any other textual content, it hides a complex and challenging structure that requires domain-speciﬁc computational approaches for mining semantics from it. The NEEL challenge series, established in 2013, has contributed to the collection of emerging trends in the ﬁeld and deﬁnition of standardised benchmark corpora for entity recognition and linking in tweets, ensuring high quality labelled data that facilitates comparisons between different approaches. This article reports the ﬁndings and lessons learnt through an analysis of speciﬁc characteristics of the created corpora, limitations, lessons learnt from the different participants and pointers for furthering the
26 June 2006

This paper analyses the attitudes of residents in a region of the Spanish Mediterranean coast where tourism is mainly based on the building of second homes, often on a massive scale. A face-to-face survey (n=430) conducted within the Spanish population indicates that the ideological context in which residential tourism has developed with such intensity is contained in a framework of social legitimisation. However, it is possible to distinguish between two groups: the defenders, who tend to view the region as one that is essentially tourist in nature, and the critics, who place greater emphasis on the property dimension. The former tend to justify this process and its evolution by recognising the economic benefits it may bring, whereas the latter tend to question the socio-cultural and environmental costs of such development. © 2011 International University College. All rights reserved
Air Stripping of Chloroform from Water

The Environmental Protection Agency recently promulgated interim regulations requiring the reduction of trihalomethane compounds to 100 μg/I as chloroform or below in many public drinking water supplies. Such substances generally exhibit a significant vapor pressure in the warmer areas of the United States, suggesting the use of liquid-gas transfer processes for their removal.
Depoliticizing Zimbabwe's Economy: Solutions for Two Million Percent

Although Zimbabwe’s deep-seated economic malaise has robbed citizens of their savings, rendered incomes practically worthless and undermined domestic productivity, experts believe that a resolution of the political impasse could trigger much-needed policy reform and economic revitalization. This USIPeace Briefing reviews policy options and recommendations proffered at a USIP roundtable discussion on August 12, 2008. The panelists were:
Subclinical hypothyroidism and functional mobility in older adults.

BACKGROUND Health risks associated with subclinical hypothyroidism in older adults are unclear. Our objective was to compare the functional mobility of people aged 70 to 79 years by thyroid function categorized by thyrotropin (TSH) level as euthyroid (>or=0.4 to <4.5 mIU/L), mild subclinical hypothyroid (>or=4.5 to <7.0 mIU/L), or moderate subclinical hypothyroid (>or=7.0 to <or=20.0 mIU/L with a normal free thyroxine level) cross-sectionally and over 2 years. METHODS A total of 2290 community-dwelling residents participating in the year 2 clinic visit (July 1998-June 1999) of the Health, Aging, and Body Composition (Health ABC) Study, who had measured TSH level, had the capacity to walk 20 m unaided, and were not taking thyroid medication or had TSH levels consistent with hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism. Main outcome measures included self-reported and performance-based measures of mobility (usual and rapid gait speed and endurance walking ability) assessed at study baseline (year 2) and 2 years later. RESULTS In age- and sex-adjusted analyses, the mild subclinical hypothyroid group (vs the euthyroid group) demonstrated better mobility (faster mean usual and rapid gait speed [1.20 vs 1.15 m/s and 1.65 vs 1.56 m/s, respectively; P < .001] and had a higher percentage of those with good cardiorespiratory fitness and reported walking ease [39.2% vs 28.0% and 44.7% vs 36.5%, respectively; P < .001]). After 2 years, persons with mild subclinical hypothyroidism experienced a similar decline as the euthyroid group but maintained their mobility advantage. Persons with moderate subclinical hypothyroidism had similar mobility and mobility decline as the euthyroid group. CONCLUSION Generally, well-functioning 70- to 79-year-old individuals with subclinical hypothyroidism do not demonstrate increased risk of mobility problems, and those with mild elevations in TSH level show a slight functional advantage.
Preliminary characterization and valorisation of Ficus benjamina fruits for biofuel application

Ficus benjamina (FB) is a perennial plant that serves ornamental purposes. Its fruits are non-edible and considered ‘waste’ with no defined application. This paper discusses the valorisation and identification of the potential of Ficus benjamina fruits as a suitable biofuel feedstock. The whole fruit was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and bomb calorimeter. In addition, the proximate and ultimate analyses were performed to determine their physical, thermal, and chemical properties for potential biofuel application. Pulverised Ficus benjamina fruits (PFB) have a porous morphology that makes them less dense with a crystallinity index of 25.5%. The moisture, ash, volatile matter, and fixed carbon contents were 9.29, 6.26, 64.35, and 20.10%, respectively. The higher heating value (19.74 MJ/kg) and lower heating value (18.55 MJ/kg) are comparable to other biomass feedstocks. The results establish the possibility of using PFB as a solid biofuel.
Describe the role of belimumab in achieving remission or LDA in post-hoc analysis of the randomised control trials

sion and LDA were number of flares in the 3 years before belimumab treatment initiation and baseline renal involvement. Notably, patients spending at least 50% of follow-up in LDA (66%) or at least 25% of follow-up in remission (42.9%) accumulated less damage at the end of the follow-up. Consequently, this study provided novel evidence that an earlier use of belimumab in patients with active SLE and low damage may maximise its efficacy in clinical practice.
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research The German Socio-Economic Panel No Evidence that Economic Inequality Moderates the Effect of Income on Generosity

A landmark study published in PNAS (Côté S, House J, Willer R, 2015, 112:15838–15843, doi:10.1073/pnas.1511536112) showed that higher income individuals are less generous than poorer individuals only if they reside in a U.S. state with comparatively large economic inequality. This finding might serve to reconcile inconsistent findings on the effect of social class on generosity by highlighting the moderating role of economic inequality. On the basis of the importance of replicating a major finding before readily accepting it as evidence, we analyzed the effect of the interaction between income and inequality on generosity in three large representative data sets. We analyzed the donating behavior of 27,714 U.S. households (Study 1), the generosity of 1,334 German individuals in an economic game (Study 2), and volunteering to participate in charitable activities in 30,985 participants from 30 countries (Study 3). We found no evidence for the postulated moderation effect in any study. This result is especially remarkable because (a) our samples were very large, leading to high power to detect effects that exist, and (b) the cross-country analysis employed in Study 3 led to much greater variability in economic inequality. These findings indicate that the moderation effect might be rather specific and cannot be easily generalized. Consequently, economic inequality might not be a plausible explanation for the heterogeneous results on the effect of social class
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research The German Socio-Economic Panel study Unfair Pay and Health

This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. We use an integrated approach exploiting complementarities between controlled lab and representative panel data. In a simple principal-agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals decide how this revenue is allocated between themselves and their agents. Throughout the experiment we record agents’ heart rate variability, which is an indicator of stress-related impaired cardiac autonomic control, and which has been shown to predict coronary heart disease in the long-run. Our findings establish a link between unfair payment and heart rate variability. Building on these findings, we further test for potential adverse health effects of unfair pay using observational data from a large representative panel data set. Complementary to our experimental findings we show a strong and significant negative association between unfair pay and health outcomes, in particular cardiovascular health.
SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research The German Socio-Economic Panel Capturing Affective Well-Being in Daily Life with the Day Reconstrution Method : A Refined View on Positive and Negative Affect

In the last years, there has been a shift from traditional measurements of affective well-being to approaches such as the day reconstruction method (DRM). While the traditional approaches often assess trait level differences in well-being, the DRM allows examining affective dynamics in everyday contexts. The latter may ultimately explain why some people feel more happy than others (e.g., because they experience more gratification during everyday experiences). Even though DRM research has increased in the last years, little is known about the structure of affective well-being in everyday life, and potential structural differences of affect at the withinand between-person level have rarely been considered. We thus thoroughly examined the structure of affective well-being in daily life, using data from a nationally representative sample (N = 2401) of the German Socioeco-nomic Panel Innovation Sample that were obtained with the DRM. Multilevel structural equation models revealed that (1) affective well-being in daily life cannot be reduced to the two global dimensions positive and negative affect (PA and NA) but that the structure of NA is more nuanced; (2) the emerging subfacets of NA have distinct associations with global indicators of well-being (e.g., life satisfaction); (3) there are structural differences of affective well-being at the withinand between-person level, and (4) the relationships between affect subfacets and activities such as “work” can be opposed at the withinand between-person level. These results show that a more differentiated view on the structure of affect contributes to a better understanding of affective well-being in everyday life.
ALS and the Gut-Brain Axis: A protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis assessing the relationship between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the gut and its microbiome.

AbstractAbstract Background:Background: ALS is a devastating neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive loss of motor function. At the time of symptom manifestation, effective treatment options are extremely limited, due in part to the irreversible loss of motor neurons at this late stage of the disease. Recent research has highlighted the involvement of both gut pathology and gut microbiota as important factors in early disease pathogenesis, which may represent an opportunity for early diagnosis and intervention, prior to neurological symptom onset and thus prior to significant motor neuron loss. Aim: Aim: The aim of this review is to perform a comprehensive analysis of the literature to identify potential pre-symptomatic pathological hallmarks of ALS in the gut, including, but not limited to, changes in gut microbiota and protein aggregation. Methods:Methods: This protocol details the strategy for the proposed systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and compare studies assessing gut-related pathological changes in ALS separated in to two analyses assessing (i) gut microbiota and (ii) non-microbiota related pathways, with the ultimate aim of identifying opportunities for early disease detection before neurological symptom onset.
Plantation Forestry In The Tropics: The Role, Silviculture, and Use of Planted Forests for Industrial, Social, Environmental, and Agroforestry Purposes

PART I INTRODUCTION PART II LAND, SOCIAL & ECONOMIC FACTORS, AND PLANNING IN PLANTATION DEVELOPMENT PART III PLANTATION SILVICULTURE PART IV TREE-PLANTING AND PLANTATION FORESTRY IN RURAL DEVELOPMENT, SOIL CONSERVATION, REHABILITATION, ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS, AND SUSTAINABILITY
A path forward: Global health, telemedicine, and hematology

*Correspondence to: Claudia R. Morris, MD; Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine Emory-Children’s Center for Cystic Fibrosis and Airways Disease Research Emory University School of Medicine, 1760 Haygood Drive NE W458, Atlanta, GA 30322. E-mail: claudia.r. morris@emory.edu Received for publication: 22 April 2016; Revised: 28 April 2016; Accepted: 3 May 2016 Published online: 6 May 2016 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/ajh.24408
Demystifying Doha: On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City

Over the past decade or so, the wealth produced by Qatar's oil and gas exports has generated a construction development boom in its capital city of Doha and the surrounding vicinity. Since the late 1990s, the number of inhabitants has grown from less than 400,000 to more than 1.7 million today. In many respects, Doha is portrayed as an important emerging global capital in the Gulf region, which has been positioning and re-inventing itself on the map of international architecture and urbanism, with a global image of building clusters of glass office towers, as well as cultural and educational facilities. While focusing on the architectural and planning aspects of Doha's intensive urbanization, this first comprehensive examination of the city sets this within the socio-political and economic context of the wider Arabian Peninsula. 'Demystifying Doha - On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City' features a comprehensive discussion on contemporary architecture and urbanism of Doha as an emerging regional metropolis. It provides a critical analysis of the evolution of architecture and urbanism as products of the contemporary global condition. Issues that pertain to emerging service hubs, decentralised urban governance, integrated urban development strategies, image-making practices, urban identity, the dialectic relations between the city and its society and sustainable urbanism are all examined to elucidate the urban evolution and the contemporary condition of Doha. 'Demystifying Doha - On Architecture and Urbanism in an Emerging City' concludes by suggesting a framework for future studies of the city as well as for investigating the future of similar cities, setting out an agenda for sustainable urban growth, while invigorating the multiple roles urban planners and architects can play in shaping this future.
Razlike u vremenu startne reakcije i postignutom rezultatu u sprinterskim disciplinama u finalu olimpijskih igara u Londonu // Differences in Time of Start Reaction and Achieved Result in the Sprint Disciplines in the Finals of The Olympic Games in London

Sažetak: U sprinterskim disciplinama vrlo važno mjesto zauzimaju start i startno ubrzanje koje u velikoj mjeri generise konacni rezultat. U zavisnosti od odgovarajucih individualnih morfoloskih dimenzija, a narocito motorickih i funkcionalnih sposobnosti takmicara mogucnost dobre realizacije ovih parametara je izvjesnija. Međutim, i pored vrhunskih rezultata koje ostvaruju, razlike u ova dva parametra su evidentne, sto u pogledu na konacni rezultat ima određenog efekta. Cilj ovog istraživanja je bio da se utvrde razlike u vremenu startne reakcije i rezultata u sprinterskim disciplinama finalista Olimpijskih igara u Londonu 2012. godine. Analizirani su rezultati finalista (24 muska) i 24 (ženska) takmicara koji su nastupili u finalnim trkama na 100m, 200m i 400m. Evaluacija vremena startne reakcije (ms) i rezultata u sprintu (s) bazirala se na izvjestajima koje je službeno objavila Međunarodna atletska federacija (IAAF). Rezultati analize T-testa su pokazali statisticki znacajne razlike u vremenu reakcije kod ženskih takmicara u disciplinama trcanja 100m i 400m (t= -3,220; p<0,01) kao i za discipline 200m i 400m (t=-2,550; p<0,01), za razliku od muskih finalista gdje nisu zabilježene statisticki znacajne razlike. Takođe, u istim disciplinama između polova nisu zabilježene statisticki znacajne razlike, dok su evidentne u postignutim rezultatima u disciplinama 100m (t=-2,842; p<0,05), 200m (t=-11,526; p<0,01) i 400m (t=-27,019; p<0,01).