Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Properties of the inspiration‐related activity of sympathetic preganglionic neurones of the cervical trunk in the cat.

1. The experiments reported here have examined some temporal characteristics of the inspiration‐related sympathetic discharge of the cat in control conditions and during forcing of the respiratory oscillator into marked deviations from its natural frequency. The purpose of these experiments was to establish whether or not the relation of sympathetic to phrenic nerve activity shows properties consistent with the hypothesis that the inspiration‐related sympathetic discharge is driven by a neural oscillator, independent of, but coupled and stably entrained to, the brain‐stem respiratory oscillator. 2. The electrical activity of the whole cervical sympathetic trunk (n = 26) or of small strands of the cervical trunk containing single units (n = 20) and of the phrenic nerve was recorded in pentobarbitone‐anaesthetized, paralysed, artificially ventilated, sino‐aortic denervated cats. Most of the cats were bilaterally vagotomized. 3. The onset of the inspiratory burst of the sympathetic preganglionic neurones had a fixed delay from the onset of the phrenic nerve burst. The level of activity within the burst, in whole cervical trunk recording, reached a maximum in early inspiration and then was maintained at approximately this level for the rest of inspiration (twenty‐two out of twenty‐six cats). In four cats the activity level increased throughout the burst. Individual sympathetic preganglionic neurones displaying inspiration‐related burst firing were characteristically recruited in early inspiration and thereafter maintained an approximately constant firing frequency for the rest of inspiration. 4. Electrical stimulation of afferents in the superior laryngeal nerve during various phases of the respiratory cycle caused equivalent, phase‐dependent, resetting patterns of both phrenic nerve and inspiration‐related sympathetic discharge. 5. In cats with intact vagus nerves, entrainment of the brain‐stem respiratory oscillator to the frequency of the respiratory pump was used to change the frequency of the former, within limits, by changing the frequency of the latter. Over the range of frequencies tested, the pump‐to‐phrenic delay varied as a function of frequency, while the delay between phrenic and sympathetic burst onset was essentially independent of frequency. 6. In hyperthermic, hypocapnic cats phrenic nerve burst frequency increased up to about 300 bursts/min from a value of 15 bursts/min in normothermia‐normocapnia. At all frequencies within this range the sympathetic burst maintained a delay, with respect to the phrenic burst, which was essentially independent of frequency. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Resistance and strategic responses in food supply networks: metro cash & carry in bangalore

Abstract. The transnational expansion of large retail and wholesale companies such as Metro, Carrefour and Wal‐Mart has caused changes in the market situation and consequent power shifts, not only in the retail sector but also in the supply networks in host countries. These developments at least potentially endanger the livelihoods of old established retailers, intermediaries and employees of these businesses. Thus, it is not surprising that the investments of the transnational companies can result in resistance from those affected. As an analysis of Metro and its activities in the federal state of Karnataka in India shows, this resistance can influence the activities of the company to develop a modern supply network. This study analyses the way in which the actors of resistance develop and exercise power and how this in turn influences Metro. The global production network (GPN) approach is used as an analytical framework. The results emphasize the importance of networks external to the firm for the analysis of processes of globalization. The company's behaviour cannot be understood unless the resistance is taken into account. The study shows that the GPN framework provides the tools to analyse the influence of actors such as civil society groups, trade unions and associations as part of the production network. However, up to now this option has rarely been used.
On The Road to Monetary Union – Do Arab Gulf Cooperation Council Economies React in the same way to United States' Monetary Policy Shocks?

This paper empirically estimates the responses of inflation and non-oil output growth from Arab Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) Countries to monetary policy shocks from the United States (US) in order to determine whether there is evidence to support the US dollar as the anchor for the proposed unified currency. For this, a structural vector autoregression identified with short-run restrictions was employed for each country with fund rate as US monetary policy instrument, non-oil output growth, and inflation. The main results that are of interest to decision makers suggest that (i) with respect to inflation, AGCC countries show synchronized responses to monetary policy shocks from the US and these responses are similar to US own inflation; (ii) with respect to non-oil output growth, there is no clear indication that US monetary policy can do as good of a job for AGCC countries as it has done at home. Therefore, importing monetary policy from the United States via a dollar peg may guarantee stable inflation for AGCC countries but not necessarily stable non-oil output growth. To the extent that the non-oil output response is taken seriously and there are concerns over the dollar's ability to perform its role as a store of value, a basket peg with both the US dollar and the Euro may be a sound alternative as confirmed by the variance decomposition analysis of our augmented SVAR with a proxy for the European short-term interest rate.
Pierpont and the Capital Market

For almost forty years Trevor Sykes was one of the most recognizable business journalists in Australia. Sykes created his Pierpont character in February 1972 while writing for Australia's leading financial paper, the Australian Financial Review. Pierpont was a take on J. Pierpont Morgan, founder of the J. P. Morgan banking house. Sykes used his Pierpont column to research and reflect on the curious world of Australian business. Articles were mostly in narrative form, comprising an in-depth critique of one or more companies and written with more than a touch of humour. Over the years Pierpont garnered a large following, and it is therefore quite possible his musings influenced investors' beliefs about company fundamentals. We assess this possibility by examining the share price movements of companies around the time they found themselves featured in a Pierpont column. We extend previous work in this area by examining the market reaction to a popular columnist's writings published regularly over a lengthy period, and by implementing an extensive double-coding procedure that allows us to more finely and reliably partition trading recommendations based on the content of each column. In brief, we find evidence that stocks with positive coverage by Pierpont enjoyed abnormal returns averaging 6.4 per cent over thirty days around the publication date, while stocks with negative coverage suffered abnormal losses of 5.5 per cent. Trading volume was also affected.
Risk Management Lessons Worth Remembering from the Credit Crisis of 2007–2009

This article by Golub and Crum presents six important lessons worth remembering from the credit crisis of 2007–2009.The recent credit crisis revealed the inadequacy of many standard methods in quantitative risk management and called into question the general efficiency of markets. Golub and Crum’s analysis of the six lessons learned provides insights into what went wrong and offers advice on steps that institutions can take to avoid similar failures in the future.The authors present detailed analysis on risk management issues relating to liquidity, securitized products, certification,market risk, and policy risk.
Ideas versus Resources: Explaining the Flat Tax and Pension Privatization Revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

This manuscript examines the rapid spread of pension privatization and the flat tax in former communist countries in order to understand why new policy ideas take hold and to better understand the role played by material resources in the diffusion of new policy ideas. Unlike previous liberalizing reforms, these programs spread without direct or indirect EU pressure. Rather, these programs spread due to the efforts of policy entrepreneurs in the World Bank in the case of pension privatization, and due to the work of policy advocates in right-wing think tanks in the case of flat taxes. Policy entrepreneurs in both instances succeeded in arguing that these programs would serve to make former communist economies more competitive in a highly integrated global economy. A comparative analysis of the diffusion of pension privatization and the flat tax allows us to examine how resources shape the nature and the path of diffusion of new policy ideas. This paper concludes that resources may accelerate the diffusion of policy ideas and encourage their adoption in larger states, but ideas can nonetheless diffuse quickly in competitive environments through networks of policy entrepreneurs even in the absence of significant financial resources or membership conditionalities.
Rational Choice in Medicaid Managed Care: A Critique

ABSTRACT Market-based health care policies cast patients as active decision-making consumers who are able to choose among health plans and select the highest quality and lowest priced providers. Embodied in the Consumer Assessment of Health Plans Study (CAHPS), a national policy initiative based on assumptions of rational choice, such a model has recently been extended to low income populations enrolled in the U.S. Medicaid program. This paper describes and seeks to investigate the efficacy of this policy initiative by examining three questions: (1) Are Medicaid recipients willing to take an active stance in selecting health plans? (2) Do they see the varying health plans as offering genuine choice? and (3) Does the ability to choose one's own health plan help address some of the long-standing obstacles to quality care for the poor? Analyses of these questions are informed by a review of existing knowledge about the life circumstances and health needs of low income populations (particularly low income women), and by original data from Kansas Medicaid recipients, gathered in conjunction with a state-wide version of the CAHPS. We find significant discrepancies between the assumptions of this model and the realities of low income women's lives. We conclude that the current consumer model of health care reflects class-biased assumptions about rational choice that negate the daily experiences of the poor, offers little in the way of real choice, and fails to address long-standing health needs of low income populations. Market incentives and consumerism will be effective only when the social context of poverty is taken into account and addressed by health care initiatives.
Serologic Survey of Select Infectious Diseases in Coyotes and Raccoons in Nebraska

To obtain data about select zoonotic and other infectious diseases in free-ranging predators in five ecoregions in Nebraska, sera were collected from 67 coyotes (Canis la-trans) and 63 raccoons (Procyon lotor) from November 2002 through January 2003. For coyotes, antibodies were detected against canine distemper virus (CDV, 61%), Francisella tularensis (32%), Rickettsia rickettsi (13%), and flaviviruses (48%). None of the coyote sera had antibodies to Borrelia burgdorferi, Brucella canis, or six serovars of Leptospira interrogans. Because serologic cross-reactivity exists among flaviviruses, 14 sera from flavivirus-positive coyotes were also tested for St. Louis encephalitis virus (SLE) antibodies and two (14%) were positive, suggesting that up to 48% of coyotes tested had antibodies against West Nile virus (WNV). For raccoons, antibodies were detected against CDV (33%), F. tularensis (38%), and three serovars of L. interrogans (11%).
The Value of Leisure Time: A Contingent Rating Approach

In this paper, we apply the contingent rating method to the problem of estimating a value for leisure time. This is an important component of recreation demand models. A tradition in this literature has been to use some fixed percentage of the wage rate as the value of time. However, time values are likely to vary across individuals to a greater extent than this suggests, whilst for a given individual time is differently valued according to how it is spent. Empirical results show that there is indeed a wide variation in leisure time values.
Surrogate model assisted ensemble differential evolution algorithm

Differential Evolution (DE) is a simple and effective approach for solving numerical optimization problems. However, the performance of DE is sensitive to the choice of the mutation and crossover strategies and their associated control parameters. Therefore, to obtain optimal performance, time consuming parameter tuning is necessary. In DE, different mutation and crossover strategies with different parameter settings can be appropriate during different stages of the evolution. Therefore, to obtain optimal performance using DE, various adaptation and self-adaptation techniques have been proposed. Recently, a DE algorithm with an ensemble of parameters and strategies (EPSDE) was proposed. In EPSDE, a pool of distinct mutation and crossover strategies along with a pool of values for each control parameter coexists throughout the evolution process and competes to produce offspring. The performance of EPSDE degrades if the population members get struck with a combination of strategies and parameters values that produce successful offspring but lead to premature convergence in the due course of the evolution. In this paper, we try to improve the performance of the EPSDE algorithm with the help of a surrogate model that assists in generating competitive trial vectors corresponding to each parent in every generation of the evolution. The proposed algorithm is referred to as surrogate model assisted EPSDE (SMA-EPSDE) and employs a simple Kriging model to construct the surrogate. The performance of EPSDE is evaluated on a set of 17 bound-constrained problems and is compared with state-of-the-art algorithms.
Single board impedance analyzer and transient analysis of QCR sensor response

QCR (quartz crystal resonator) sensors afford the visualization and continuative research of chemical, biochemical or microreactor processes. In this context, the resonant frequency and the attenuation of the sensor are important parameters. The paper discusses a new concept for measuring both parameters within very short cycle times which allow the tracking of fast dynamic processes during those reactions.
Winners, Losers, and Attitudes about Government in Contemporary Democracies

The article compares the effect of political majority and minority status on attitudes toward government in mature and newly established democracies. Specifically, it examines whether being in the majority translates into more positive attitudes toward government than being in the minority. Using surveys conducted by the International Social Survey Project (ISSP) in 12 democracies in 1996, it finds that being in the majority generally translates into more positive attitudes toward government. However, this effect is not of uniform magnitude across countries, nor does it affect all attitudes toward government equally. Specifically, the data show that being in the political majority or minority strongly affects attitudes toward the performance of the political system and the power of government, but does not affect people's levels of political efficacy in systematic ways.
Transactional and transformational leadership behaviour of expatriate and national managers in the UAE: a cross-cultural comparative analysis

The paper by Dianne Bealer and Ramudu Bhanugopan aims to understand the distinctiveness of the leadership styles displayed in the Middle East, particularly in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) context. The paper draws on a sample of 213 managers from several countries representing divergent institutional contexts working in the UAE. It therefore examines and compares the leadership behaviour of expatriate and national managers in the UAE so as to identify their distinct styles and approaches. The factorial structure, mean, standard deviation and percentiles were derived to compare the leadership styles. The results revealed that significant differences existed on two dimensions of leadership practice between the sets of managers; managers in the UAE were found to be less transformational and more passive avoidant than managers in the USA and Europe. Implications for theory and practice, limitations and directions for future research are discussed. The study provides a better understanding on the comparative leadership styles across the USA, Europe and Middle East, which is indispensable to cross-border business practices that the International Human Resource Management literature identifies as especially important to Middle Eastern context. The findings of the study may extend to other countries in the Middle Eastern region. Comparative studies on transactional and transformational leadership practices involving expatriate and national managers across cultures are scant, particularly in the Middle East. The aim of the study, therefore, is to examine and compare the leadership behaviour of expatriate and national managers in the UAE so as to identify their distinct styles and approaches. The study analyses responses employing factorial and descriptive statistical methods from a sample of 213 managers from several countries representing divergent institutional contexts working in the UAE. The results revealed that significant differences existed on two dimensions of leadership practice between the expatriate and national managers. The findings of the study were then compared to the standard norms of leadership practices in the USA and Europe. Implications for cross-cultural and comparative understanding of leadership styles in the UAE are discussed. This study paves avenues for further research to be carried out on a larger sample drawn from a wider cross-section of Middle Eastern countries.
The Effects of Attraction on Investment Decisions

The attraction effect occurs when an inferior item changes a decision-maker's perception of the relationship between other available alternatives, contrary to the expectations of rational decision-making. This study presents the first evidence that this effect, which has appeared persistently in consumer research, can influence investment decisions. The study also finds two distinct patterns of reaction to the inferior item as a sign of "cluster attraction"-a way of spreading investment risk. Evidence of attraction means that the values of important facets of corporate reporting may not be stable across an investor's decisions, but may depend on the items presently available for investment. Results of an experiment conducted with approximately 100 graduate students with investing experience or interest show that the investor's perceived values of reported financial or non-financial performance, quality of earnings, and information source reliability are subject to trade-offs and can be altered by the composition of the decision set, rather than by any intrinsic change in the investment candidate itself. The discussion highlights the implications of these findings for an understanding of how investors regard the qualities of financial reporting.
Propolis: A natural biomaterial for dental and oral healthcare

The field of health has always emphasised on the use of natural products for curing diseases. There are varieties of natural products (such as silk, herbal tea, chitosan) used today in the biomedical application in treating a large array of systemic diseases. The natural product "Propolis" is a non-toxic resinous material having beneficial properties such as antimicrobial, anticancer, antifungal, antiviral and anti-inflammatory; hence gain the attention of researchers for its potential for bio-dental applications. The study aims to explore the properties and chemistry of propolis concerning biomedical and dental applications. In addition, status and scope of propolis for current and potential future in bio-dental applications have been discussed. This review gives an insight to the reader about the possible use of propolis in modern-day dentistry.
Increased detection rate of glaucomatous visual field damage with locally condensed grids: a comparison between fundus-oriented perimetry and conventional visual field examination.

OBJECTIVE To compare detection rates of glaucomatous visual field defects (VFDs) between the conventional 6 degrees x 6 degrees stimulus grid and locally condensed target arrangements in morphologically suspicious regions. METHODS A total of 66 eyes of 66 patients with glaucoma or patients suspected of having glaucoma (34 females and 32 males; age range, 14-85 years) were enrolled in this study. Individual, local target condensation was realized by fundus-oriented perimetry (FOP) using a campimeter and compared with the results of conventional automated perimetry (CAP), obtained with the Humphrey Field Analyzer (30-2 grid). RESULTS Twenty-three of the 66 patients showed normal findings with both methods; 27 had concordantly pathological results. In 15 patients we obtained normal findings with CAP, whereas FOP revealed early glaucomatous VFDs. Only one patient showed VFDs with CAP, whereas FOP results were normal. Scotoma detection rates significantly differed between the 2 methods (P<.001, sign test). Test duration with FOP was more than doubled compared with CAP. When considering only FOP points coinciding with the 6 degrees spacing of the 30-2 grid, there was no longer a significant difference between FOP and CAP (P>.25, sign test). This indicated that the target pattern, rather than the perimetric device, was most relevant for detecting glaucomatous VFDs. Follow-up throughout a series of 3 subsequent sessions at 6-month intervals revealed repeatable results in more than two thirds of all eyes for both FOP and CAP. CONCLUSIONS Fundus-oriented perimetry that uses individually condensed test grids significantly increases the detection rate of glaucomatous VFDs in morphologically conspicuous areas compared with CAP using equidistant (6 degrees x 6 degrees) target arrangements. Repeatability is comparable between both methods.