Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Taxes on Conventional Preferred Stock: Evidence from the 2003 JGTRRA Dividend Tax Reduction

ABSTRACT: This study examines the extent to which investor-level taxes affect the pricing and pre-tax returns of securities. Specifically, we investigate whether the pre-tax yield on outstanding conventional preferred stock (CPS) decreased after the 2003 Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) reduced the individual's tax rate on dividends. Our research design for detecting tax effects is strong for two reasons: (1) JGTRRA provides a quasi-experimental setting that permits a pre/post design, and (2) we use trust preferred stock (TPS) issued by the same firm as the tax-disfavored benchmark asset, which permits a matched-pair design that controls for risk. Additional tests including CPS issues without TPS counterparts confirm the effect of JGTRRA on CPS issues. The results indicate that investors reacted to the new tax-favored status of CPS by bidding up its price, which lowered its yield. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources identified in the paper.
Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform: How Politicians and Policy Ideas Transform Resilient Institutions

Hoe worden ingrijpende hervormingen in de alom als weerbarstig beschouwde Duitse welvaartsstaat doorgevoerd? Dit boek betoogt dat het 'ideeengerichte leiderschap' van vooraanstaande politici in belangrijke mate invloed heeft uitgeoefend op de institutionele veranderingen in het sociaal beleid. Sabina Stiller baseert haar bevindingen op diepgaande case studies van afzonderlijke hervormingen in de gezondheidszorg, pensioenen en werkloosheidsverzekering sinds het begin van de jaren '90 van de vorige eeuw. De auteur biedt een langetermijnperspectief op beleidshervormingen binnen deze gebieden, maar ook op gezinsbeleid waar recentelijk aanzienlijke hervormingen hebben plaatsgevonden. Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform concludeert dat deze 'Bismarckiaanse' verzorgingsstaat zich op een pad van 'hybridisering' bevindt, die de Duitse politiek confronteert met groeiende sociale ongelijkheid. Dit boek is onmisbaar voor studenten, academici en mensen die geinteresseerd zijn in de rol van beleidsideeen, leiderschap en de recente hervormingen van de Duitse welvaartsstaat.
Adaptive control for ship steering based on clonal selection model identification

Using clonal selection model identification, an adaptive PD control algorithm with disturbance compensation is proposed for uncertain and nonlinear system in ship steering. Actual ship with disturbance and model uncertainty, regarded as a black box, is dynamically identified as second-order linear model with disturbance terms; then, certainty equivalence principle is applied to tune the PD control parameters while the disturbance is compensated. The combination of previous elitist reservation and stochastic initialization for the initial population in clonal selection algorithm improves the optimization efficiency for dynamic problem. Simulations on the third-order nonlinear cargo vessel verify that the proposed adaptive control algorithm possesses strong robustness and improves the capability of PD controller in inhibiting stable error.
Estimation of inner scattering parameters from coupled systems

Accurate and reliable radio frequency scattering matrix measurements require careful considerations about the measurement setup. The network analyzer (NA) is calibrated for its connection points. Any component between the connection point affects the measurement result, e.g. additional lines to the actual device under test (DUT) lead to falsified measurements. De-embedding is used to correct the raw measurement from known influences to the left and to the right side of the DUT. Hence de-embedding provides information about the inner state. In this paper we discuss the reversed scenario. We consider two DUTs, which are connected by means of a transmission line in between. Can we we provide information about the two DUTs from outer scattering matrix measurements?
Effects of Urtica dioica on oxidative stress, proliferation and apoptosis after partial hepatectomy in rats

The present study was performed to investigate the effect of Urtica dioica (UD) on liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy (PH) in rats. A total of 24 male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into three groups: sham-operated, PH and PH + UD; each group contains eight animals. The rats in UD-treated groups were given UD oils (2 ml/kg/day) once a day orally for 7 days starting 3 days prior to hepatectomy operation. At day 7 after resection, liver samples were collected. The levels of malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione (GSH) were estimated in liver homogenates. Moreover, histopathological examination, mitotic index (MI), proliferating cell nuclear antigen labeling, proliferation index (PI), transferase-mediated deoxyuridine triphosphate nick end-labeling assay, apoptotic index (AI) were evaluated at day 7 after hepatectomy. As a result, UD significantly increased MI and PI, significantly decreased AI and also attenuated hepatic vacuolar degeneration and sinusoidal congestion in PH rats. UD treatment significantly decreased the elevated tissue MDA level and increased the reduced SOD activity and GSH level in the tissues. These results suggest that UD pretreatment was beneficial for rat liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy.
Boards' Response to Shareholders' Dissatisfaction: The Case of Shareholders' Say on Pay in the UK

In the United Kingdom, a recently adopted regulation provides shareholders the opportunity to cast non-binding (advisory) votes on firms' compensation reports during annual meetings (i.e., ‘Say-on-Pay'). This study examines how the regulation affected the behavior of shareholders and boards. I find evidence that shareholders use the vote to convey their dissatisfaction with excessive executive compensation practices. In addition, I find evidence that boards respond to shareholders' dissatisfaction by: (1) reducing the excessiveness of CEO compensation for firms whose CEOs have above average excess compensation; or (2) forcing the CEO out of office. These findings provide evidence of ‘Say-on-Pay' regulation playing a role in firms' corporate governance.
The Talk Shop and Shop Talk: Employment and Work in a Call Centre

Call centres represent a blend of old and new employment features that are only partially grasped by existing theoretical alternatives. Labour process theory suggests that call centres are best depicted as new electronic assembly lines of fragmented, low skill service labour. Second-wave post-industrial theory represents call centres as a significant foray into the information/knowledge economy. On the basis of a case study that combines both survey results and on-site observation, the author argues that the sophisticated information technologies that have captured the awe of other investigators have delivered less than total managerial control. Less frequently studied are the novel cultures of employment management that have accompanied the development of call centres and have incorporated information technology into their functioning. These cultures and employee responses to them represent an important, if under-analysed, aspect of call centre operation.
Planning Innovations in Land Management and Governance in Fragmented Rural Areas: Two Examples from Galicia (Spain)

Land fragmentation can be an important drawback for the development of rural areas. Due to the small size of the units, land management and planning are difficult from both the private and the public point of view. In some regions of Europe, land fragmentation can lead to the collapse of land-based activities such as agriculture and forestry. This process triggers land abandonment, which causes social, economic and environmental problems. Traditional interventions such as land consolidation have not worked because of the scale of land fragmentation, which leads to huge transaction costs. New planning instruments and governance structures for land management that balance the relations between property rights, management and labour force can be developed, in order to avoid the problems of land fragmentation. In this paper, we present two innovative examples of land management and governance structures for dealing with land fragmentation in rural areas of Galicia northwestern Spain. They were able to combine the use of individual and common property rights to make land use more sustainable, instead of trying to change land ownership. The new governance structures helped to increase efficiency and sustainability of the land use by, for example, increasing labour productivity, clarifying property rights and diminishing land abandonment.
Heterologous Priming-Boosting Immunization of Cattle with Mycobacterium tuberculosis 85A Induces Antigen-Specific T-Cell Responses

ABSTRACT Heterologous priming-boosting vaccination regimens involving priming with plasmid DNA antigen constructs and inoculating (boosting) with the same recombinant antigen expressed in replication-attenuated poxviruses have recently been demonstrated to induce immunity, based on CD4+- and CD8+-T-cell responses, against several diseases in both rodents and primates. We show that similar priming-boosting vaccination strategies using the 85A antigen of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are effective in inducing antigen-specific gamma interferon-secreting CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, detected by a bovine enzyme-linked immunospot assay, in Bos indicus cattle. T-cell responses induced by priming with either plasmid DNA or fowlpox virus 85A constructs were enhanced by boosting with modified vaccinia virus Ankara expressing the same antigen administered intradermally. On the basis of the data, it appears that intradermal priming was more effective than intramuscular delivery of the priming dose for boosting with the modified vaccinia virus Ankara strain in cattle. Using either fowlpox virus or DNA priming, there was a significant bias toward induction of CD4+- rather than CD8+-T-cell responses. These data illustrate the general applicability of priming-boosting vaccination strategies for induction of antigen-specific T-cell responses and suggest that the method may be useful for development of veterinary vaccines.
Transfusion practices for patients with sickle cell disease at major academic medical centers participating in the Atlanta Sickle Cell Consortium

Abstract The Atlanta Sickle Cell Consortium represents more than 2600 pediatric and adult patients with sickle cell disease (SCD) in the metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia, area receiving care at four major locations, each providing comprehensive care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Both transfusion services that support these sites use two levels of prospective phenotype matching to decrease the rates of alloimmunization. Although exact rates are unknown and are currently under investigation, alloimmunization occurs infrequently with the exception of chronically transfused SCD patients, who represent the minority of active SCD patients. With increasing availability, red blood cell genotyping will be used in the near future both for determination of predicted patient phenotypes and for provision of genotypically matched donor units. Immunohematology2012;28:24–6.
Employment Protection and Labour Market Segmentation: the Fiftieth Anniversary of the “Cassa Integrazione Guadagni”

This paper analyzes the evolution of the Cassa integrazione guadagni (CIG), according to 7 different theoretical models, which offer a classification for the different cases of application that have developed since its introduction, as well as for the many policy targets pursued by the Public Authorities. Then an assessment of the economic role of CIG is attempted, divided into three separate sections. The first is aimed at evaluating the economic long-term effect on macro performance, where the crucial balance is between a “crowding-out effect” on private investment and a “profit-maintenance effect” by lowering the effective wage rate. The second section approaches the employment consequences of the CIG by examining a second crucial balance: that between the protection granted to the employed and the obstacles raised for the employment of the non-employed (above all, freezing workers' turnover). This issue is tackled too in terms of the insider-outsider theory, showing the possible relevance of CIG in segmenting the labour market and keeping the wage rate dynamics. Finally the paper briefly examines the profound revision of the CIG recently approved by the Italian Parliament, aimed at avoiding excessive costs while enhancing labour mobility.
Principles of Electrophysiology: An Overview

This overview gives brief accounts of the mechanism of nerve excitation, receptor/channel functions, cable properties of neurons, and voltage clamp and patch clamp principles. Among various aspects of electrophysiology, emphasis is placed on the mechanistic studies of receptors/channels. A few sample records of membrane currents are illustrated to aid reader's comprehension. Finally some useful reference books are given for more comprehensive information.
Rural Housing Consumption and Social Stratification in Transitional China: Evidence from a National Survey

Safe and affordable housing is accepted as a basic right in the modern world. Studies on transitional societies have demonstrated how politicized the housing market can become and how housing consumption is determined by both economic forces and public rules. Rural housing in China offers a unique institutional environment. While residential land is collectively owned and allocated, villagers have the freedom to make decisions with regard to construction space. Drawing on a large national survey, this paper provides the first systematic analysis of the consequences of these different institutional rules. In terms of housing resources, residential land is distributed in a relatively equitable fashion, but the building of structures on that land is defined by a higher degree of social stratification. These findings extend the current literature and confirm the power of institutional rules in housing consumption.
The Determinants of Korea's Foreign Direct Investment from the United States, 1980-2001: An Empirical Investigation of Firm-Level Data

"This paper examines the link between Korea's foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows from the United States and locational, financial, and macroeconomic variables using firm-level data of FDI transactions, which were completed during the period from January 1980 to February 2001. Korea's FDI inflows from the United States are found to have significant associations with real exchange rates, relative wealth, relative wage costs, expected exchange rate changes, and interest rate differentials. The extent and direction of the links, however, have varied according to different FDI regimes during the last 20 yr in Korea. Industry-specific factors have also played a role in determining Korea's FDI inflows". ("JEL "F21, F30) Copyright 2007 Western Economic Association International.
Measuring Returns on Investments in Collectibles

This paper considers the question of how to measure and interpret the financial return to investing in collectibles. We review various methodologies for creating priced indexes and then discuss studies that explicitly calculate a rate of return to some set of collectibles. While most collectibles appear to yield positive real returns, the majority embody more risk and yield lower financial returns than stocks. Other characteristics of collectibles prices, such as covariance with other asset prices, are also examined.
Signatures of differentially regulated interferon gene expression and vasculotrophism in the peripheral blood cells of systemic sclerosis patients.

OBJECTIVE To obtain a global view of the immunological alterations occurring in early systemic sclerosis (SSc) by transcriptional profiling of peripheral blood cells (PBCs). METHODS Oligonucleotide microarrays were used to compare PBC gene expression profiles in 18 SSc cases (<2 yr duration) and 18 controls matched for race, gender and ethnicity. SSc cases had no prior or current exposure to cytotoxic drugs. PAXgene tubes were used to stabilize RNA during phlebotomy. Changes in gene expression were independently validated by real-time polymerase chain reaction. RESULTS SSc PBCs demonstrated differential expression of 18 interferon-inducible genes. Six of these genes were identical to the interferon signature genes in lupus peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Notably, SSc PBCs also had increased expression of allograft inflammatory factor (AIF1) and several selectins and integrins involved in cellular adhesion to the endothelium. Global analysis of 284 known biological pathways revealed that 13 were differentially regulated in SSc PBCs, including two pathways (IL2RB and GATA3) that lead to T(H)2 polarization. CONCLUSIONS Transcriptional profiling reliably discriminates between PBCs from SSc and normal donors despite the fact that they represent a heterogeneous cell population. Multiple biological pathways were differentially regulated in SSc PBCs, but a common thread across these pathways was alterations in protein tyrosine kinase 2beta and mitogen-activated protein kinase signalling. Although the SSc PBC gene expression profile demonstrated some parallels with the lupus interferon gene signature, there was also increased expression of transcripts encoding proteins that target PBCs to the endothelium, which might be relevant to the vasculopathy of SSc.
Decomposition of the cost growth for the US forest product industries

This article investigates sources that lead to the cost growth of eight U.S. forest products industries during the period 1997 to 2005. The cost growth rate decomposes into two components: the cost efficiency change and the cost technical change. Empirical evidences indicate that the cost growth in wood product industries is predominantly from cost technical change. In contrast, cost inefficiency primarily drives the cost growth in the pulp and paper industries.
A Note on the Convergence of Binomial‐Pricing and Compound‐Option Models

THE BINOMIAL-PRICING MODEL of Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein [2] and the compound-option model of Geske [3] are both elegant and self-contained frameworks for the valuation of American options and related contingent claims, each providing us with a distinctive valuation procedure flexible enough to be adapted to a wide variety of problems. For American-type options on assets with (a) prices following a lognormal diffusion process and (b) a continuous-time exercise policy, such as put options on individual stocks, calls and puts on foreign exchange, and calls and puts on futures contracts, the binomial-pricing model approximates both the stochastic process and the exercise-opportunity set, the latter by restricting exercise to a discrete set of dates. The compound-option model, on the other hand, approximates only the exercise-opportunity set. However, it pays for this with a high price in computational requirements; specifically, with N exercise dates allowed, multivariate normal probabilities of every order up to and including N must be evaluated. In their article on the valuation of put options, Geske and Johnson [4] provide an ingenious solution to this problem by applying acceleration techniques common in numerical analysis but new to the finance literature. Letting T be the time to expiration of the option and P, the value of a compound option with exercise permitted at the n uniformly spaced dates [T/n, 2T/n, . , T], they generate the sequence of compound-option values [P1, P2, . , PN]. Polynomial extrapolation is then used to estimate P = lim n -X oo Pn. They found this procedure to be very accurate over a limited sample of put options with low values of N. Though not discussed by Geske and Johnson, the reasons for the effectiveness of acceleration techniques in a compound-option model are apparent from a cursory examination. An acceleration technique will perform best when the approximating sequence converges uniformly on the true value of the contingent claim and worst when convergence includes complex and unpredictable oscilla
Control of Meiotic Recombination and Gene Expression in Yeast by a Simple Repetitive DNA Sequence That Excludes Nucleosomes

ABSTRACT Tandem repeats of the pentanucleotide 5′-CCGNN (where N indicates any base) were previously shown to exclude nucleosomes in vitro (Y.-H. Wang and J. D. Griffith, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93:8863–8867, 1996). To determine the in vivo effects of these sequences, we replaced the upstream regulatory sequences of the HIS4 gene ofSaccharomyces cerevisiae with either 12 or 48 tandem copies of CCGNN. Both tracts activated HIS4 transcription. We found that (CCGNN)12 tracts elevated meiotic recombination (hot spot activity), whereas the (CCGNN)48 tract repressed recombination (cold spot activity). In addition, a “pure” tract of (CCGAT)12 activated both transcription and meiotic recombination. We suggest that the cold spot activity of the (CCGNN)48 tract is related to the phenomenon of the suppressive interactions of adjacent hot spots previously described in yeast (Q.-Q. Fan, F. Xu, and T. D. Petes, Mol. Cell. Biol. 15:1679–1688, 1995; Q.-Q. Fan, F. Xu, M. A. White, and T. D. Petes, Genetics 145:661–670, 1997; T.-C. Wu and M. Lichten, Genetics 140:55–66, 1995; L. Xu and N. Kleckner, EMBO J. 16:5115–5128, 1995).
PTMeta: Increasing identification rates of modified peptides using modification prescanning and meta‐analysis

The analysis of peptides and proteins in complex biological systems has greatly improved over the last decade. State‐of‐the‐art mass spectrometric instruments combined with adequate software tools allow for more and more comprehensive proteome analyses. Most proteome‐wide studies focus on the analysis of unmodified proteins or look at selected modifications only. However, spectral information of protein modifications, chemically induced through sample preparation or post‐translationally attached in biological pathways is acquired as a significant, yet disregarded, fraction of tandem spectra in most discovery studies. We present a new computational pipeline, PTMeta, to uncover information of modifications attached to peptides. We use modification prescanning to pinpoint the most abundant potential modifications, followed by extensive database search and a statistical framework to combine results from database search runs with different modification settings.
Informed Futures Market Speculation: An Analysis of the Commitments of Traders Reports for the New York 'C' Coffee Contract

Informed speculators receive signals which are informative about future cash prices. Hedger s observe only the futures price. They attempt to infer the information content of the signals bu t only do so imperfectly because of the presence of noise traders. The consequence is tha t speculators bid positions away from the hedgers. In general, one is not able to observ e asymmetrically-held information, but this is possible over the period 1993-95 when there was an influx of speculative capital from non-traditional sources into physical commodity markets. We attempt to substantiate this claim by estimating models for futures positions on the New Yor k coffee market over that period.
Some effects of feeding sheep on low-sodium hay with and without sodium supplement

1. After a preliminary period on pelleted perennial ryegrass hay (0.28% sodium in dry matter) groups of sheep were fed on timothy hay (0.04% Na) with and without added sodium chloride or sodium bicarbonate. 2. When the sheep were fed on timothy hay, the Na content of urine and faeces fell and balances were negative. Na content of saliva fell markedly and potassium content increased. 3. Supplementary N a prevented these changes. 4. The low levels of dietary Na appeared to have no effect on the well-being of the sheep.