Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Household Work Intensity and the Adequacy of Social Protection in the EU

This working paper explores how the poverty reduction capacity of social security evolved in the Â‘boomingÂ’ years leading up to the current economic crisis. The question to arise is whether and, if so, why social protection provides an explanation for, on the one hand, disappointing poverty trends in many of the EU15 and, on the other, declining poverty risks in Ireland and most of the new Member States. To what extent are these trends connected with expanding labour markets and evolutions in pre-transfer poverty on the one hand and the volume and efficiency of cash benefits deployed on the other? Relying on ECHP, SILC and SOEP data, the paper presents and discusses empirical indications of shifts in the pro-poorness and in the adequacy of cash benefits and the mechanisms underlying such trends. We find that in the nineties the adequacy of social transfers declined significantly in the traditional strongest welfare states in the Nordic countries. Conversely, the clusters of the Southern States in the nineties and of the new Member States in the 2000s displayed a significant increase of poverty reduction by social transfers. During the first years of the crisis the poverty reducing impact of social transfer systems in Europe seems to have been on the decline in the Nordic Countries, on the Continent as well as in the East. The most important conclusion to be drawn is the striking Â– and in many countries rising Â– inadequacy of social protection for individuals living in households with a low work intensity. This points at the tension between the adequacy of income protection and activation lending credence to the notion that policies have sought to raise employment at least partially by reducing reservation wages.
Expression of a domain ontology model in unified modeling language for the World Health Organization International classification of impairment, disability, and handicap, version 2

The International Classification of Impairment, Disability, and Handicap Version 2(ICIDH-2), an anticipated addition to the World Health Organization suite of terminologies, has been put forth as a means for standardized representation of generic health and/or functional status data. In an attempt to make explicit the ontology upon which ICIDH-2 is based the authors derived a concept model expressed as a Unified Modeling Language static class diagram through abstraction of concept-terms in the documentation provided with the Full Version Pre-Final Draft of ICIDH-2 (December 2000). ICIDH-2's semantic structure is analyzed and evaluated for its semantic consistency. Discussion is presented on the utility of domain ontology models in terminology development and potential roles ICIDH-2 might play, as it undergoes refinement towards a representational standard. It is intended that the proposed UML rendering will stimulate domain discourse and consensus that will lead to enhancement of conceptual clarity in the ICIDH-2 ontological hierarchy and further enable its study and development as a healthcare classification.
Handoff probability in wireless mobile networks

New results for the handoff probability in wireless mobile networks are developed taking into account the effects of the limited bandwidth and unreliable wireless channel, either of which may result in the forced termination of an ongoing call connection. The formulae are derived based upon the general scenario, i.e. general call holding time, general cell residence time and the generalized wireless channel model. Numerical investigation is carried out to discuss the impact of the wireless channel characteristics upon the handoff probability.
Seniority Wages and Economic Growth

Economies that lack well‐developed markets for mobilizing household savings may, in some instances, grow faster than those that are financially more developed, provided that their labour markets are also characterized by seniority rather than spot wages. This occurs because of a Kaldorian redistribution effect in a model where households have finite‐horizons and where older workers, as an endogenous feature, have higher saving rates.
Community profiling and quantification of putative autotrophic thaumarchaeal communities in environmental samples.

Growth of thaumarchaea with ammonia as a sole energy source has been demonstrated but their mode(s) of carbon metabolism remain uncertain, with evidence for autotrophy, heterotrophy and mixotrophy. Understanding the role played by autotrophy in thaumarchaeal growth strategies has been hindered by the lack of an adequate marker gene and PCR primers. The aim of this study was to develop PCR-based approaches to determine the prevalence of autotrophy associated with thaumarchaea. Primer pairs were designed specifically targeting hcd genes, encoding putative 4-hydroxybutyryl-CoA dehydratase, a key functional enzyme in thaumarchaeal autotrophy. Phylogenetic analysis of hcd gene sequences amplified from soils and sediments indicated the existence of environment-specific sequence clusters and hcd abundance in soil was 10(5) -10(6) g(-1) soil, as assessed by quantitative PCR. Abundance and diversity of hcd genes were also determined in soil microcosms incubated with and without acetylene, a known inhibitor of nitrification. Nitrification was accompanied by increases in hcd gene abundance and in the relative abundance of two bands in denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis profiles. Nitrification, growth and community changes were inhibited by acetylene and the findings are consistent with active autotrophic ammonia oxidation by archaea in soil.
Opportunistic Scheduling and Spectrum Reuse in Relay-Based Cellular OFDMA Networks

We investigate the spectral efficiency performance of channel-aware (i.e., opportunistic) multiuser scheduling algorithms over relay-assisted broadband cellular networks; with special focus on orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) resource allocation. Capacity analysis and system-level simulation results for various spectrum reuse policies are presented including (i) fully orthogonal resource sharing across the base station (BS) and relay stations (RSs) in each cell, and (ii) simultaneous transmissions (i.e., at the same time and frequency) by the BS and multiple RSs in each cell, using realistic broadband channel models. Our study provides insights on the potential performance enhancements from multihop routing and spectrum reuse policies in the presence of multiuser diversity gains from opportunistic scheduling and helps to identify the key design tradeoffs associated with interference management in relay-assisted multiuser communication.
Crisis or opportunity? Turkey, Greece and the political economy of South-East Europe in the 2010s

During the 2000s, the European Union (EU) and the euro zone provided anchors for regional integration in South-East Europe including the Western Balkans. Today’s crisis has called into question the credibility but not the desirability of that framework, and regional actors can still mobilize building blocks forged in the past decade for much needed bottom-up reforms. The process could be galvanized by a regional insider with economic and political capital. With Greece absorbed in its own crisis, Turkey is a candidate for such a role. Assessing Ankara’s capacity to drive change in the region vis-à-vis the debate over its once touted, apparently moribund ‘zero-problems-with-neighbours’ policy, we argue that Turkey’s most sustained foreign policy success has been in the Western Balkans. This is because its approach complement the soft instrument legacies of the earlier EU framework for regional integration. As such, if Ankara abandons its own commitment to economic and political liberalization, it may forfeit its potential to serve as a leader in the region.
Commentary on clinical utility of sperm DNA fragmentation testing

Approximately 15% of couples are unable to conceive after one year of unprotected intercourse and a male factor is solely responsible or contributory in approximately 50% (1). Of these couples up to 30% may have unexplained infertility with a normal semen analysis and no obvious reason for their inability to conceive (2,3). Semen analyses alone are difficult to use in clinical decision making due to their inherent variability (4). This limitation extends into a variety of clinical situations including assistive reproductive technique (ART) failure, unexplained infertility in the setting of normal bulk semen parameters, and patients with low grade clinical varicoceles.
The Future of American Banking

The future of American banking is in doubt and the industry and the federal insurance fund that helps support it are in turmoil. The ingredients of the turmoil have been simmering in public view since at least the early 1980s when commercial bank loans to lesser developed countries (LDCs) began to default. The difficulties began to boil at the end of the decade when the prospect first arose that the banks' deposit insurer, the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF) that is administered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), might require dollars to resolve bank failure as occurred in the savings and loan debacle. This book frames the major economic and policy issues raised by the banking crisis whose resolution largely determines the future of American banking. It focuses on the current reported condition of the banking industry, concentrating on large banks in particular. A longer-run economic prognosis for the banking industry is presented and the implications of future bank failures for the financial services sector and federal regulatory policy are discussed. Most importantly the book contains suggestions for changes in the nation's deposit-insurance system and accompanying banking laws. These changes would reduce the federal government's deposit insurance liability and would provide banks with potentially profitable opportunities. The study includes a wealth of data on the financial condition of American banks and the system as a whole, some of it not easily obtainable from any other source. The authors are internationally recognized as knowledgeable experts on the state of the American banking system and the options and prospects for US banking reform.
Region growing using superpixels with learned shape prior

Abstract. Region growing is a classical image segmentation method based on hierarchical region aggregation using local similarity rules. Our proposed method differs from classical region growing in three important aspects. First, it works on the level of superpixels instead of pixels, which leads to a substantial speed-up. Second, our method uses learned statistical shape properties that encourage plausible shapes. In particular, we use ray features to describe the object boundary. Third, our method can segment multiple objects and ensure that the segmentations do not overlap. The problem is represented as an energy minimization and is solved either greedily or iteratively using graph cuts. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method and compare it with alternative approaches on the task of segmenting individual eggs in microscopy images of Drosophila ovaries.
The relocation processes and international business travellers in the era of globalisation and their impact on employee experiences

In recent years, multinational companies have offered new alternatives to expatriation. One of the important and widespread alternatives is business travels - short, frequent business trips abroad for work purposes, which enables face-to-face business interaction without the need to physically move with the family to a foreign company as is the case in the process of assignment. Although this phenomenon is steadily increasing in the business world, the research of this topic is most limited and very little is known of its impact on the family, the career, the personal characteristics, and other relevant issues. The increasing power of globalisation and with it the expectation of the increase of the phenomenon of business travels necessitates research on the topic. The present research study is an initial exploratory study. The article presents a qualitative research that included 44 research participants examined the feelings and attitudes of managers who frequently travel for business.
Supply Chain and Network Performance: Metrics for Profitability, Productivity, and Efficiency

The architecture of the firm involves determination of a boundary that encompasses the functions managed by the firm. The past decade has seen substantial reorganization of firms where vertical or horizontal integration has been unbundled into weaker forms of collaborations including value chains and networks. This observation has forced a re‐conceptualization of the boundaries of the firm to incorporate such collaborations. These collaborations are virtual and highly dynamic. They emerge and persist when two conditions are met. First, they must enable generation of greater value than might be attained through independent operation and anonymous transactions through markets. Second, the resulting growth must be shared with members in a way that retains their participation. Each of these conditions can be verified only if performance of the collaboration can be established. This paper recognizes the need for “metrics of performance” that are by necessity operationally feasible to measure. While conceptual approaches have been studied in the management literature, this paper considers from theoretic perspectives these issues and derives measures of the performance of the overall collaboration as well as of the participating enterprises. The paper presents a framework that can be applied to both vertical and horizontal collaborations as found in supply chains and networks. The paper offers suggestions on empirical methods for estimation of measures derived.
Conference Tourism: A Problem for the Environment, as well as for Research?

The increase in professional trips to conferences and seminars made by employees in the 'knowledge industries' presents an environmentally worrying trend in mobility in contemporary post-industrial society. A number of factors are involved. Globalisation and regional competition encourage host cities and institutions to put themselves on the conference map. For the individual traveller, conferences and seminars offer escape from daily routines and the chance to experience new, perhaps exotic, places. But trips to distant conferences can have serious environmental impacts, especially if made by airplane. Because of the aggressive impact of greenhouse gas emissions in the upper atmosphere, their threat to the global climate is more serious than similar trips made at surface level. In addition, the time spent on such trips competes with other tasks: conference participation takes scarce time resources available to university academics for research. In the age of electronic communication, it is questionable whether conferences are effective arenas for communicating and gathering knowledge.
Veterinary Services in the Horn of Africa: Where are We Now?

Pastoralists are marginalised in the Horn of Africa and receive inadequate veterinary services. Under economic structural adjustment programmes, public veterinary services became increasingly ineffective and, in response, community-based NGO programmes were established in some pastoral areas. While these programmes were often considered to be effective, with few exceptions they were small in scale, isolated from central government, and based on subsidised systems of drug distribution. Consequently, their sustainability was questionable. Governments now have incentives to improve veterinary services to pastoralists because of new possibilities for increasing livestock exports alongside new concerns about protecting consumers from livestock-related diseases. Current policy and institutional reform is encouraging a greater role for the private sector in service delivery but this is developing slowly, particularly in pastoral areas where future provision is likely to involve public–private partnerships. Trish.
Two-State Markov Switching Volatility Model for Ultra-High-Frequency Data of JGB Futures

This paper specifies two-state Markov-switching volatility models and investigates the volatility behavior of the ultra-high-frequently observed returns on Japanese government bond futures transaction. In addition, we test the duration and volume effects on transition probabilities with a time-varying probability model. Our main findings are as follows: First, MS-GARCH models are very effective to reduce the autocorrelation of volatility, since the Ljung-Box statistics for squared standardized residuals of the models are dramatically reduced and present significantly smaller values in contrast to the single-regime GARCH model. Second, the volatilities of MS-GARCH models respond to new information more sensitively than those of the single-regime model. Third, the duration decreases volatility mainly by reducing the transition probability from highvariance regime to high-variance regime in the time-varying transition probability model, while the trading volume decreases both transition probabilities so that the transactions lead to a shift from one regime to another.
Soil Moisture Estimation Using Differential Radar Interferometry: Toward Separating Soil Moisture and Displacements

Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DInSAR) measurements are sensitive to displacements, but also to soil moisture <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> changes. Here, we analyze whether soil moisture can be estimated from three DInSAR observables without making any assumptions about its complex spatio-temporal dynamics, with the goal of removing its contribution from the displacement estimates. We find that the referenced DInSAR phase can be a suitable means to estimate <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> time series up to an overall offset, as indicated by correlations with <italic>in situ</italic> measurements of 0.75–0.90 in two campaigns. However, the phase can only be referenced when no displacements (and atmospheric delays) occur or when they can be estimated reliably. We study the separability of displacements and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> using two additional DInSAR observables (closure phase and coherence magnitude) that are sensitive to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> but insensitive to displacements. However, our analyses show that neither contains enough information for this purpose, i.e., it is not possible to estimate <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> uniquely. The soil moisture correction of the displacement estimates is hence ambiguous too. Their applicability is furthermore limited by their proneness to model misspecifications and decorrelation. Consequently, the separation of soil moisture changes and displacements using DInSAR observations alone is difficult in practice, and—like for mitigating tropospheric errors—additional data (e.g., external <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> estimates) or assumptions (e.g., spatio-temporal patterns) are required when the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$m_{v}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> effects on the displacement estimates are comparable to the magnitude of the movements. This will be critical when soil moisture changes are correlated with the actual displacements.
Sum-Rate of Block-Wise SC Massive MIMO Systems in the Presence of Carrier Frequency Offset

In this paper, we investigate the effect of carrier frequency offset (CFO) on the sum-rate of block-wise single carrier(SC) massive MIMO systems. Based on the user knowledge regarding the channel conditions, we consider three different scenarios. In the first scenario, the users know the expectation of the effective channel including the CFO effect in the time domain. In the second scenario, the users know the expectation of the effective channel including the effect of the CFO in the frequency domain. In the third scenario, the users know the expectation of the effective channel without the effect of the CFO. We show that in the first scenario, the effect of the CFO can be completely compensated. We also show that for finite number of base station (BS) antennas, the sum-rate in the second scenario is higher than that of the third scenario. However, as the number of BS antennas tends to infinity, the sum-rate in the former case is bounded and in the later case it tends to infinity.
An Econometric Model of the Two-Part Decisionmaking Process in the Demand for Health Care

The decision to contact a physician and the decision about how often to contact a physician are determined by different decisionmakers. We introduce a negative binomial distributed hurdle model that specifies the two stages of the decisionmaking process as different stochastic processes, while at the same time taking care of the discrete nature of the data. Empirical results are based on a cross-section of the West German Socioeconomic Panel. Specification tests reveal that the two stages of the process need to be treated as two distinct processes. This, in turn, implies that ignoring this distinction leads to serious misinterpretation.
Unsupervised Segmentation and Quantification of Anatomical Knee Features: Data From the Osteoarthritis Initiative

This paper presents a fully automated method for segmenting articular knee cartilage and bone from in vivo 3-D dual echo steady state images. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets were obtained from the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) pilot study and include longitudinal images from controls and subjects with knee osteoarthritis (OA) scanned twice at each visit (baseline, 24 month). Initially, human experts segmented six MRI series. Five of the six resultant sets served as reference atlases for a multiatlas segmentation algorithm. The methodology created precise knee segmentations that were used to extract articular cartilage volume, surface area, and thickness as well as subchondral bone plate curvature. Comparison to manual segmentation showed Dice similarity coefficient (DSC) of 0.88 and 0.84 for the femoral and tibial cartilage. In OA subjects, thickness measurements showed test-retest precision ranging from 0.014 mm (0.6%) at the femur to 0.038 mm (1.6%) at the femoral trochlea. In the same population, the curvature test-retest precision ranged from 0.0005 mm-1 (3.6%) at the femur to 0.0026 mm-1 (11.7%) at the medial tibia. Thickness longitudinal changes showed OA Pearson correlation coefficient of 0.94 for the femur. In conclusion, the fully automated segmentation methodology produces reproducible cartilage volume, thickness, and shape measurements valuable for the study of OA progression.