Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drivers of carsharing diffusion in Germany: an actor-centred approach

Carsharing increasingly gains ground as a transportation mode in Europe and the world. The present paper contributes to the literature by studying the roles and interplay of market and non-market actors in the diffusion of carsharing. It applies an actor-centred framework to the context of market development of carsharing in Germany, considering the perspectives of carsharing providers, customers, and politics. Data from secondary sources, national published printed matters, and survey data are used to analyse market and non-market actors. Results from the customer survey show that motives of convenience and value matter more than ideological motives such as environmental awareness. Findings at the provider-level correspond to this result, as even ‘traditional’ companies adjust their services to improve their usefulness. The analysis of public policy measures indicates that only marginal national level political action has been taken. This finding is in stark contrast to other European countries, such as the Netherlands or Italy. The synthesis of relations between the different market and non-market actors reveals that infrastructural variables are a key determinant for carsharing diffusion. In view of the recent growth of carsharing services infrastructural provision becomes even more salient. Disposing of the critical resource of parking space, political actors can catalyse the ongoing process of cross- and trans-regional diffusion.
RiDE themed issue – On disability: creative tensions in applied theatre: an extended review

Taylor and Francis CDSO_A_512808. sgm 10.1080/09687599.2010. 512808 Disability & Society 0968-7599 (pri t)/1360-0508 (online) Original Article 2 10 & Francis 5 6 0 00October 20 0 Professor AlanRoulstone ar ul to e@dmu.ac. uk The year 2009 witnessed the publication of a themed edition of Research in Drama Education on disability (vol. 14, no. 1)1. This is a ‘first’, and I approached the collected articles with some excitement. I am equally as excited having read the contributions to the edition. I come to this review as a disability studies academic with no background in writing on drama or the arts more generally, and this was the preferred approach to reviewing expressed by the journal editor. Disability arts and drama have been abiding passions outside of my ‘day job’ as it were. In presenting a fresh gaze on the themed edition I hoped to better open up the work on drama and disability to wider scrutiny, to transcend shibboleths, to offer a reflexive account back to the contributors. There are as might be expected from a collected edition of this kind very disparate ideas presenting in the 12 papers in the themed edition. There are, however, a number of convergent themes which can be summed up as a concern with:
Intrusive re‐experiencing in post‐traumatic stress disorder: Phenomenology, theory, and therapy

The article describes features of trauma memories in post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including characteristics of unintentional re‐experiencing symptoms and intentional recall of trauma narratives. Re‐experiencing symptoms are usually sensory impressions and emotional responses from the trauma that appear to lack a time perspective and a context. The vast majority of intrusive memories can be interpreted as re‐experiencing of warning signals, i.e., stimuli that signalled the onset of the trauma or of moments when the meaning of the event changed for the worse. Triggers of re‐experiencing symptoms include stimuli that have perceptual similarity to cues accompanying the traumatic event. Intentional recall of the trauma in PTSD may be characterised by confusion about temporal order, and difficulty in accessing important details, both of which contribute to problematic appraisals. Recall tends to be disjointed. When patients with PTSD deliberately recall the worst moments of the trauma, they often do not access other relevant (usually subsequent) information that would correct impressions/predictions made at the time. A theoretical analysis of re‐experiencing symptoms and their triggers is offered, and implications for treatment are discussed. These include the need to actively incorporate updating information ( “I know now …”) into the worst moments of the trauma memory, and to train patients to discriminate between the stimuli that were present during the trauma ( “then”) and the innocuous triggers of re‐experiencing symptoms ( “now”).
Optimal capacity of hybrid unicast-broadcast networks for mobile TV services

This paper studies the optimal broadcast coverage radius in a hybrid network from the perspective of network planning. The hybrid network is composed of a unicast and broadcast systems which cooperate to deliver linear services on portable and mobile devices. First we define a hybrid approach in which the coverage radius of the broadcast network is adjusted according to the distribution of the users in the service area. Then, by applying convex optimization methods, we derive a closed-form expression of the optimal broadcast coverage radius that maximizes the average capacity per user in the hybrid network. The results show that the closed-form expression of the broadcast coverage radius is in good agreement with the simulation results, which validates the theoretical approach.
Illegal Transfer of Technologies: A Taxonomic View

Illegal transfer of technology (ITT) is one of the major policy formulation, industrial management, and law enforcement issues of this decade. It includes industrial espionage, the piracy of; software, logos, and hardware designs and it overlaps with issues of terrorism and those involving weapons of mass destruction. It is of concern at corporate, national, and world-body levels. Technology herein is defined broadly to include intellectual property. ITT involves various kinds of players, takes on various modalities and is done for various motivations. The ITT literature is very disjoint and disparate. It transcends several academic disciplines, professions and professional communities. This paper presents a taxonomy defining the field in its entirety and delineating all of its facets in a manner that is parsimonious yet discriminating. A number of potential uses for the taxonomy are identified as are its potential users.
Managerial risk-taking incentives and non-GAAP earnings disclosures

We investigate the association between risk-taking incentives provided by stock-based compensation arrangements and non-GAAP financial disclosures. Controlling for compensation to stock price sensitivity, we find that managers with higher compensation to stock volatility sensitivity (vega) are more likely to be associated with voluntary non-GAAP earnings information disclosures. In addition, higher-vega managers are found to be associated with more frequent and less opportunistic non-GAAP earnings information disclosures. Robust to alternative specifications and estimations, our findings suggest that compensation arrangements can encourage managers to make more, higher-quality voluntary non-GAAP disclosures.
Clear and Clean: The Fixed Effects of the Liberal Peace

In their article in this issue, Donald P. Green, Soo Yeon Kim, and David H. Yoon claim, contrary to liberal theory and extensive evidence, that neither joint democracy nor economic interdependence significantly reduces the frequency of militarized interstate disputes in pooled time-series analyses when dyadic fixed effects are taken into account. Similarly, their fixed-effects analyses contradict theory and previous evidence that democracies have higher levels of trade with one another than do other types of states. Our reexamination, however, refutes both claims and reinforces previous findings. Their fixed-effects analyses of disputes produces distorted results because they consider a relatively short time period, 1951–92, in which variation in the binary dependent variable and the key independent variables, democracy and trade, is limited. When we analyze a longer period (1886–1992), the results confirm liberal theory. The differences between our analyses of bilateral trade and those of Green, Kim, and Yoon primarily arise from a seemingly minor methodological decision. A more reasonable method confirms that democracies do have higher levels of trade than expected on purely economic grounds. Though we do not advocate a fixed-effects model for analyzing these data and have serious reservations about its general usefulness, our findings provide additional confirmation of liberal theories of international relations.
Ubiquilin Modifies TDP-43 Toxicity in a Drosophila Model of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)*

TDP-43 (43-kDa TAR DNA-binding protein) is a major constituent of ubiquitin-positive cytosolic aggregates present in neurons of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and ubiquitin-positive fronto-temporal lobar degeneration (FTLD-U). Inherited mutations in TDP-43 have been linked to familial forms of ALS, indicating a key role for TDP-43 in disease pathogenesis. Here, we describe a Drosophila melanogaster model of TDP-43 proteinopathy. Expression of wild-type human TDP-43 protein in Drosophila motor neurons led to motor dysfunction and dramatic reduction of life span. Interestingly, coexpression of ubiquilin 1, a previously identified TDP-43-interacting protein with suspected functions in autophagy and proteasome targeting, reduced steady-state TDP-43 expression but enhanced the severity of TDP-43 phenotypes. Finally, ectopically expressed TDP-43 was largely localized to motor neuron nuclei, suggesting that expression of wild-type TDP-43 alone is detrimental even in the absence of cytosolic aggregation. Our findings demonstrate that TDP-43 exerts cell-autonomous neurotoxicity in Drosophila and further imply that dose-dependent alterations of TDP-43 nuclear function may underlie motor neuron death in ALS.
A FPGA-based low-cost real-time wavelet packet denoising system

Most existing wavelets are irrational, which are inefficient in hardware implementation and have expensive cost of resources. Based on rational wavelets, we establish a real-time wavelet packet denoising system, which greatly improves the implementation efficiency on FPGA chips. The experimental results reveal that rational 9–7 wavelet decomposition hardware area in slices is less than 1/6 of the pipelined 9–7. To get further decrease in resources of the denoising system, we put forward a new threshold algorithm on denoising the coefficients, and it performs nearly the same as Donoho universal threshold algorithm, while consuming much less resources when implementing on FPGA.
Lobbying coalitions and policy-making: How interest groups can shape policy formulation in the European Union

The question of who wins and who loses lies at the heart of any analysis of policy-making. Understanding why some interest groups win and others lose should be of central concern to scholars of European politics since the European Union (EU) constitutes a promising political opportunity structure for organized interests. Despite the central importance of interest group inuence in the European Union, only few have however studied it. What is more, the literature is characterized by a multitude of hypotheses and somewhat contradictory ndings. This paper aims to overcome the shortcomings of the literature by presenting a theoretical exchange model that identies citizen support and market power of lobbying coalitions as the major determinants of interest group inuence. These hypotheses are tested based on large new dataset: Combining a quantitative text analysis of interest group submissions to Commission consultations with an online survey among interest groups, the theoretical expectations are tested across 56 policy issues and 2,696 interest groups while controlling for issue characteristics. The empirical analysis conrms the theoretical expectations indicating that lobbying is a collective enterprise and that citizen support and market power of entire lobbying coalitions can best explain variation in interest group inuence.
Sweet Charity, revisited: Organizational responses to food insecurity in Hamilton and Toronto, Canada

In the last two decades, emergency food provision (e.g., food banks, meal programmes) has become an increasingly institutionalized form of hunger relief. Critiques of the emergency food system, as articulated by Poppendieck’s 1998 book Sweet Charity? , suggest that such programmes are unable to cope with growing hunger in a meaningful, stable, efficient, or culturally appropriate way, and that they may facilitate government retrenchment. Meanwhile, popular attention has increasingly focused on the environmental and social costs of our globalized industrial food system, and efforts to challenge it (e.g., urban fruit gleaning, chicken rearing) are becoming widespread. These efforts have drawn new kinds of organizations into the world of food (in)security. Drawing on organizational documents and key informant interviews, this paper examines how emergency food provision is changing because of the rise of ‘community food security’ discourse and practice in the period since Sweet Charity? Findings suggest that emergency food providers have responded to critiques in partial and incongruent ways. Organizations face structural constraints that curtail their ability to reorganize, while new kinds of organizations are engaging in community food security projects, both challenging and reinforcing the charity food model in ways that have relevance for progressive (food) organizing more generally.
Slow and Fast Neocortical Oscillations in the Senescence-Accelerated Mouse Model SAMP8

The senescence-accelerated mouse prone 8 (SAMP8) model is characterized by accelerated, progressive cognitive decline as well as Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like neurodegenerative changes, and resembles the etiology of multicausal, sporadic late-onset/age-related AD in humans. Our aim was to find whether these AD-like pathological features, together with the cognitive deficits present in the SAMP8 strain, are accompanied by disturbances in cortical network activity with respect to control mice (SAM resistance 1, SAMR1) and, if so, how the alterations in cortical activity progress with age. For this purpose, we characterized the extracellular spontaneous oscillatory activity in different regions of the cerebral cortex of SAMP8 and SAMR1 mice under ketamine anesthesia at 5 and 7 months of age. Under these conditions, slow oscillations and fast rhythms generated in the cortical network were recorded and different parameters of these oscillations were quantified and compared between SAMP8 and their control, SAMR1 mice. The average frequency of slow oscillations in SAMP8 mice was decreased with respect to the control mice at both studied ages. An elongation of the silent periods or Down states was behind the decreased slow oscillatory frequency while the duration of active or Up states remained stable. SAMP8 mice also presented increased cycle variability and reduced high frequency components during Down states. During Up states, the power peak in the gamma range was displaced towards lower frequencies in all the cortical areas of SAMP8 with respect to control mice suggesting that the spectral profile of SAMP8 animals is shifted towards lower frequencies. This shift is reminiscent to one of the principal hallmarks of electroencephalography (EEG) abnormalities in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and adds evidence in support of the suitability of the SAMP8 mouse as a model of this disease. Although some of the differences between SAMP8 and control mice were emphasized with age, the evolution of the studied parameters as SAMR1 mice got older indicates that the SAMR1 phenotype tends to converge with that of SAMP8 animals. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic characterization of the cortical slow and fast rhythms in the SAMP8 strain and it provides useful insights about the cellular and synaptic mechanisms underlying the reported alterations.
A Modification of Raju, Burke and Normand's (1990) New Model for Utility Analysis

Raju, Burke, and Normand (1990) proposed a new procedure for estimating the dollar value contribution of personnel selection programs. This paper sug gests some modifications to their procedure following applications in two Aus tralian samples and contributes to the ongoing development and refinement of these models. The results show that, depending on the definition of a particular parameter in the procedure, the new approach might give higher or lower estimates of the dollar value contribution of personnel selection pro grams than the more widely used Schmidt, Hunter, Mckenzie and Muldrow (1979) procedure. Difficulties in applying the new procedure and possible limitations of this study are also discussed. These results also contribute to the growing international database of utility estimates which is comprised mainly of North American data at present.
Human TLR8 is activated upon recognition of Borrelia burgdorferi RNA in the phagosome of human monocytes

Phagocytosed Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the Lyme disease spirochete, induces a robust and complex innate immune response in human monocytes, in which TLR8 cooperates with TLR2 in the induction of NF‐κB‐mediated cytokine production, whereas TLR8 is solely responsible for transcription of IFN‐β through IRF7. We now establish the role of Bb RNA in TLR8‐mediated induction of IFN‐β. First, using TLR2‐transfected HEK.293 cells, which were unable to phagocytose intact Bb, we observed TLR2 activation by lipoprotein‐rich borrelial lysates and TLR2 synthetic ligands but not in response to live spirochetes. Purified Bb RNA, but not borrelial DNA, triggered TLR8 activation. Neither of these 2 ligands induced activation of TLR7. Using purified human monocytes we then show that phagocytosed live Bb, as well as equivalent amounts of borrelial RNA delivered into the phagosome by polyethylenimine (PEI), induces transcription of IFN‐β and secretion of TNF‐α. The cytokine response to purified Bb RNA was markedly impaired in human monocytes naturally deficient in IRAK‐4 and in cells with knockdown TLR8 expression by small interfering RNA. Using confocal microscopy we provide evidence that TLR8 colocalizes with internalized Bb RNA in both early (EEA1) and late endosomes (LAMP1). Live bacterial RNA staining indicates that spirochetal RNA does not transfer from the phagosome into the cytosol. Using fluorescent dextran particles we show that phagosomal integrity in Bb‐infected monocytes is not affected. We demonstrate, for the first time, that Bb RNA is a TLR8 ligand in human monocytes and that transcription of IFN‐β in response to the spirochete is induced from within the phagosomal vacuole through the TLR8‐MyD88 pathway.
Optimization Study of Machine Parameters for 10-MW Salient-Pole Wind Turbine HTS Generators

Large-scale wind turbine high-temperature superconducting (HTS) synchronous generators (WTHGs) can directly meet the wind power systems under low speeds and have great merits such as lighter weight and higher efficiency than the conventional counterparts due to HTS carrying high current density. In this paper, an electrical design method of large-scale salient-pole WTHGs with different stator outer diameters is briefly shown. The basic machine parameters of the operating temperature, the magnetic flux density, and the number of poles for 10-MW WTHGs are optimized and determined considering the main generator performance (generator weight, HTS length, and generator efficiency). Then, the influence of the stator outer diameter on the main generator performance is made clear. Finally, the optimized design results of 10-MW WTHGs with different stator outer diameters are studied, and the magnetic flux simulation results are shown.
The Convenience Yield and the Informational Content of the Oil Futures Price

Abstract Recent studies have shown that futures prices do not generally outperform naive no-change forecasts of spot prices, calling into question the usefulness of futures prices for forecasting purposes. However, such usefulness is predicated on the question of whether certain modeling strategies are able to yield more of the information found in futures prices. Applying a forecast-based approach, we study the extent to which alternative ways of modeling futures prices can reveal the extent of the information present in futures prices. Using weekly and monthly data, and futures of maturities of one to four months, we notably examine the out-of-sample predictability of futures prices over various forecast horizons, and in real-time, whereby parameters are updated prior to each sequential forecast. Our results with weekly data are particularly interesting. We find that models allowing for a time-varying convenience yield often produce considerably more precise forecasts over the three forecast horizons considered. Thus, more of the informational content of futures prices is attainable when both the price level and the distance of the latter from spot price are jointly considered, rather than when only the price level is considered. We also document that forecast performances improve with longer date-to-maturity futures, suggesting that the role of the convenience yield is greater when physical oil inventories are held for longer durations. Finally, we show that forecast accuracy is highest at the one year horizon, though the time-varying convenience models have a much higher accuracy than unit-root-based models even over the three and five-year horizons.
High-Power Array Antenna Based on Phase-Adjustable Array Element for Wireless Power Transmission

Based on a polarization twist reflector, a novel single-fed high-power and phase-adjustable array element is presented. Without a complicated feeding network, the element is simply excited by a balanced-fed dipole. By rotating the polarization of the driven dipole, the element can provide a continuous and linear phase in the far-field region. With the phase-adjustable property, the element can be a substitute for a digital phase shifter. In addition, field distributions of the element are analyzed through simulation, which prove its advantage of high power-handling capacity. The proposed element is also used to form an 8 × 8 array antenna. Compared to the array with conventional phase shifters, this array not only can achieve a high-accuracy beam control within a small scanning angle, but also can handle high power. The array element and array prototypes are designed, simulated, and measured. The results reveal that the element has an aperture efficiency of 97.7% and a linear phase change from 0° to 53.5° at 5.8 GHz. Additionally, the 8 × 8 array with an unequal power divider can obtain a sidelobe level of –20.2 dB, and its measured maximum gain and aperture efficiency are 27.7 dBi and 85.6%, respectively.
A new on-line digital conceptual model oriented corporate memory constructing: taking unstructured text as a case

The integration of knowledge can be considered as a guideline for managing problems that occur in the task of knowledge management, and more particularly, in the collaborative decision-making. Integration is necessary because it allows communication between different sources. Most of the proposed approaches provide limited support for all activities of the engineering process. We propose a new on-line digital conceptual model to treat the integration of corporate knowledge. Our approach exploits natural language processing, indexation and machine learning techniques to increase productivity of the knowledge engineering task during the integration task. Good experimental studies demonstrate the multidisciplinary applications of our approach.