Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From the Global to the National Cycle: An Intricate Liaison

This paper examines the linkages between the global business cycle and national cycles. We first analyse the evolution of the global business cycle and present its main properties during global recessions and recoveries. We then consider how the sensitivity of national cycles to the global cycle varies over different phases of the global cycle and depends on country-specific features. Our findings collectively portray an intricate liaison between the global business cycle and national cycles. National business cycles are tightly linked to the global cycle, but the sensitivity of national cycles to the global cycle is much higher during global recessions than expansions. There are significant differences across countries in how they respond to the global cycle as advanced economies appear to be more sensitive to global recessions than are developing economies. Moreover, countries tend to be more sensitive to the global cycle, the more integrated they are to the global economy.
Income Inequalities and International Trade in Goods and Services: Short- and Long-Run Evidence

In this article, we study the short- and long-run effects of trade openness in services on wage inequalities. The sample covers ten Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1980 to 2005. We find a differentiated impact of trade in goods compared to trade in services: while trade in goods has a short- and a long-run impact on inequalities, trade in services has only long-run effects. Moreover, we also find that international trade in services has a stronger impact on inequalities than international trade in goods, and this effect does not concern only inequalities between top incomes and low incomes but also between top incomes and median incomes.
DIPARTIMENTO DI ECONOMIA POLITICA

- This paper adopts a multi-commodity habit formation model to study whether unhealthy behaviours are related, i.e. whether there are contemporaneous and inter temporal complementarities in Italian consumption of alcohol and tobacco. Own and crossprice elasticities, as well as the income elasticities, are calculated from the parameters of a semi-reduced system estimated on aggregate annual time series for alcohol and tobacco expenditures over the period 1960-2002. Own price elasticities are negative and tobacco appears to be more responsive than alcohol demand, although both responses are less than unity. Cross price elasticities are also negative and asymmetric showing that alcohol and tobacco are complements. Whereby a ”double dividend” could then be exploited, because public policy needs to tackle the consumption of one good only to control the demand of both. The asymmetry in the values of the cross price elasticities coupled with the relative magnitude of the own price responses suggest that the optimal strategy for maximizing public revenues through increases in ”sin” goods excise taxation would be to raise alcohol taxation more than tobacco. Finally, past consumption of one addictive good does not significantly reinforce current consumption of the other addictive good.
The role of non-nation-state actors and side events in the international climate negotiations

United Nations climate change conferences have attracted an increasing number and range of observer participants, often outnumbering national delegates. The interactions between the formal and informal spaces of climate governance at the Conference of the Parties (COP) are explored by investigating why non-nation state actors (NNSAs) attend them and by measuring to what extent official UN Side Events provide relevant information for the formal negotiations. Based on primary empirical research at recent COPs, it is found that 60–75% of Side Events have related directly to items under negotiation in the post-2012 climate negotiations. In this regard, Side Events that facilitate informal exchange between stakeholders not only provide input into the negotiations but also allow issues beyond the realm of the negotiations to be discussed, reflecting the scope of climate change. Although Side Events are an effective forum to exchange ideas and network, their current format and purpose as being events ‘on the side’ does not offer a sufficient framework for coordination between the work of NNSAs and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process.
A Highly Purified Factor VIII:c Concentrate Prepared from Cryoprecipitate by Ion‐Exchange Chromatography

Abstract. A new ion‐exchange chromatographic procedure has been developed to produce a highly purified factor VIII (FVIII) concentrate from plasma cryoprecipitate. Solubilized cryoprecipitate, after adsorption on aluminium hydroxide and cold precipitation, was treated with 0.3% tri(n‐butyl)phosphate and 1% Tween 80 at 25°c for at least 8 h to inactivate lipid‐enveloped viruses. The fraction was then loaded onto a column packed with DEAE‐Fractogel TSK 650 M and chromatographed. Most proteins and TnBP‐Tween 80 flowed through the gel unretarded. FVIII:c, which bound to the gel, was eluted by increasing the ionic strength, then was directly filter‐sterilized without ultrafiltration or addition of a protein stabilizer. Chromatographic recovery of FVIII:c was 80–90%. After freeze‐drying, FVIII:c was at a concentration of 42.5 ± 9.5 IU/ml and had a specific activity of 175.4 ± 37.8 IU/mg (n = 40), corresponding to a purification factor of over 12,000 from plasma. The typical yield of the freeze‐dried FVIII:c from cryoprecipitate was 55–65%. FVIII:c was stable for over 24 h at room temperature in the liquid state. The mean content of fibrinogen and immunoglobulin G was only 65 and 100mg/l, respectively, corresponding to 1.4 and 2.3 mg/1,000 IU FVIII:c. This concentrate, which is much purer than traditional FVIII concentrates, has been found to be well tolerated and effective in clinical treatment of hemophilia A patients.
Direct and indirect effects of generic advertising: A model with application to salmon

Abstract A 15‐equation recursive model is specified to indicate the effects of advertising on consumer preferences and behavior. Applying the model to an advertising campaign for salmon in France, results indicate that consumer recall of the television ads is associated with an increased consumption frequency of 13.7%. Decomposing this total response into an “attitude effect”; and a “reminder effect”;, results indicate primacy of the reminder effect. Specifically, 80% of the observed behavioral response is due to the reminder effect, which suggests that ad content is less important than ad presence. This inference is supported by the fact that only two of 12 belief statements affected preference formation. Of these two, the numerical effect of one belief statement was so small as to render it behaviorally insignificant. Overall, study results suggest that television ads for salmon should be kept simple, and repeated often so as to maintain “top‐of‐mind”; awareness.
A new global-analysis model for microwave circuits with lumped elements

A new global full-wave analysis model by using the gap-current ports to analyze the microwave circuits with linear or nonlinear lumped elements Is proposed. Based on this model, all electromagnetic effects due to the distributed parts of circuit structures can be easily characterized. In this study, the proposed model is applied to analyze and design a singly balanced diode mixer circuit using the slotline T-junction as a 180/spl deg/ hybrid.
A modular architecture for efficient learning

A modular architecture for supervised learning is presented. Three ways to modularize the learning are investigated: (1) preprocessing the input by a self-organizing subnetwork to extract strong features from the data, (2) supervised feature extraction, and (3) an iterative learning cycle in which only one layer learns at a time, with the output-layer weights learned by an exact method. With this modular architecture, only a small fraction of connection weights is determined by the gradient-descent method. A series of computational experiments shows the superiority of the modular model in learning quality and speed. The author begins by considering the decomposition of a feedforward network into a feature-discovery and a supervised-learning modules, then he introduces supervised feature discovery, and finally he describes a modular backpropagation algorithm
Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century

The Emergence of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict The Principles of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict Nonviolent Sanctions in the Russian Revolution The Ruhrkampf: Regional Defense from Occupation The Indian Independence Movement, 1930-1931 Denmark: Occupation and Resistance, 1940-1945 El Salvador: The Civic Strike of 1944 Solidarity versus the Polish Communist Party, 1980-1981 Strategy and the Margin of Victory
Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Navigation Using Wide-Field Optical Flow and Inertial Sensors

This paper offers a set of novel navigation techniques that rely on the use of inertial sensors and wide-field optical flow information. The aircraft ground velocity and attitude states are estimated with an Unscented Information Filter (UIF) and are evaluated with respect to two sets of experimental flight data collected from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Two different formulations are proposed, a full state formulation including velocity and attitude and a simplified formulation which assumes that the lateral and vertical velocity of the aircraft are negligible. An additional state is also considered within each formulation to recover the image distance which can be measured using a laser rangefinder. The results demonstrate that the full state formulation is able to estimate the aircraft ground velocity to within 1.3 m/s of a GPS receiver solution used as reference "truth" and regulate attitude angles within 1.4 degrees standard deviation of error for both sets of flight data.
An obligatory role for nitric oxide in autonomic control of mammalian heart rate.

Cholinergic modulation of heart rate in isolated spontaneously beating single cells from the rabbit sino‐atrial node was investigated by measuring transmembrane ionic currents using the nystatin‐perforated patch whole‐cell voltage‐clamp technique. Carbamylcholine (CCh), a stable analogue of acetylcholine (ACh), significantly inhibited L‐type calcium currents (Ica(L) which had been augmented by beta‐adrenergic stimulation. In addition, CCh activated a potassium outward current (IK(ACh)). Both effects were blocked by atropine. The possible involvement of nitric oxide (NO) in these responses was evaluated by inhibiting NO synthesis. In the presence of NG‐monomethyl‐L‐arginine (L‐NMMA, 100 microM) or nitro‐L‐arginine methyl ester (L‐NAME, 1 mM), two specific inhibitors of nitric oxide synthase (NOS), CCh no longer inhibited ICa(L). IK(ACh) could still be activated. Co‐incubation of cells in L‐NAME or in L‐NMMA with arginine (the endogenous substrate of NOS) restored the CCh‐induced attenuation of ICa(L), indicating that L‐NAME or L‐NMMA did not interfere directly with the muscarinic action of CCh on ICa(L). Effects of the NO‐releasing agent molsidomine (SIN‐1) on CCh‐induced changes in ICa(L) were also investigated. After ICa(L) had been augmented by beta‐adrenergic stimulation, SIN‐1 (0.1 mM) inhibited ICa(L); however, SIN‐1 had no further inhibitory effect after a maximal CCh concentration had been applied. These findings suggest that NO generation is an obligatory process in cholinergic inhibition of ICa(L) in mammalian cardiac pacemaker tissue.
Different scenarios for accounting reform in non-Anglophone contexts: The case of Japanese local governments since the 1990s

On the basis of an analytical framework of New Institutional Sociology (NIS), this study examines the transformation from cash-based to accrual-based accounting systems among Japanese local governments since the 1990s. The analysis indicates that their accounting reforms stem from socio-political interactions among related actors. These actors were Japan’s local governments and the national government as represented by ministries involved in the administration of local governments, such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and the Ministry of Finance. This analysis shows that NIS in general, and the concept of coercive isomorphism in particular, provide capable explanations for local governments’ widespread adoption of a modified model recommended by the MIC. In addition, the concept of decoupling explains well the lower perceived utility of accrual accounting information in managing the finances of local governments.
International Market Entry Strategies of Emerging Market MNEs: A Case Study of Qatar Telecom

ABSTRACT Drawing on existing theoretical perspectives and previous research, this study essentially investigated the strategic motives, location choice, and international entry mode strategies of emerging market multinational enterprises based on a case study of a telecom company, Qatar Telecom (Qtel) from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Using empirical findings from the semi-structured interviews, this study has clearly indicated that the main strategic motivation behind Qtel's internationalization was essentially opportunity seeking in terms of enabling market development and generating higher return on investment. Although Qtel used different entry strategies depending on the characteristics of host country markets, the company is more in favor of mergers and acquisitions than greenfield investments.
A Constant Frequency Output-Ripple-Voltage-Based Buck Converter Without Using Large ESR Capacitor

A constant frequency output-ripple-voltage based CMOS current-mode dc-dc buck converter, providing fast load transient response and reference-tracking speed, is proposed in this paper. Unlike V2 control output-ripple-voltage based buck converter, the proposed buck converter can achieve fast and stable load transient response without relying on ESR value of output capacitor. In addition, the proposed converter has faster reference-tracking speed than V2 the control counterparts by about 25 times.
Detecting adverse drug events with multiple representations of clinical measurements

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are grossly under-reported in electronic health records (EHRs). This could be mitigated by methods that are able to detect ADEs in EHRs, thereby allowing for missing ADE-specific diagnosis codes to be identified and added. A crucial aspect of constructing such systems is to find proper representations of the data in order to allow the predictive modeling to be as accurate as possible. One category of EHR data that can be used as indicators of ADEs are clinical measurements. However, using clinical measurements as features is not unproblematic due to the high rate of missing values and they can be repeated a variable number of times in each patient health record. In this study, five basic representations of clinical measurements are proposed and evaluated to handle these two problems. An empirical investigation using random forest on 27 datasets from a real EHR database with different ADE targets is presented, demonstrating that the predictive performance, in terms of accuracy and area under ROC curve, is higher when representing clinical measurements crudely as whether they were taken or how many times they were taken by a patient. Furthermore, a sixth alternative, combining all five basic representations, significantly outperforms using any of the basic representation except for one. A subsequent analysis of variable importance is also conducted with this fused feature set, showing that when clinical measurements have a high missing rate, the number of times they were taken by one patient is ranked as more informative than looking at their actual values. The observation from random forest is also confirmed empirically using other commonly employed classifiers. This study demonstrates that the way in which clinical measurements from EHRs are presented has a high impact for ADE detection, and that using multiple representations outperforms using a basic representation.
Rapid-Viability PCR Method for Detection of Live, Virulent Bacillus anthracis in Environmental Samples

ABSTRACT In the event of a biothreat agent release, hundreds of samples would need to be rapidly processed to characterize the extent of contamination and determine the efficacy of remediation activities. Current biological agent identification and viability determination methods are both labor- and time-intensive such that turnaround time for confirmed results is typically several days. In order to alleviate this issue, automated, high-throughput sample processing methods were developed in which real-time PCR analysis is conducted on samples before and after incubation. The method, referred to as rapid-viability (RV)-PCR, uses the change in cycle threshold after incubation to detect the presence of live organisms. In this article, we report a novel RV-PCR method for detection of live, virulent Bacillus anthracis, in which the incubation time was reduced from 14 h to 9 h, bringing the total turnaround time for results below 15 h. The method incorporates a magnetic bead-based DNA extraction and purification step prior to PCR analysis, as well as specific real-time PCR assays for the B. anthracis chromosome and pXO1 and pXO2 plasmids. A single laboratory verification of the optimized method applied to the detection of virulent B. anthracis in environmental samples was conducted and showed a detection level of 10 to 99 CFU/sample with both manual and automated RV-PCR methods in the presence of various challenges. Experiments exploring the relationship between the incubation time and the limit of detection suggest that the method could be further shortened by an additional 2 to 3 h for relatively clean samples.
Adjunctive role of photodynamic therapy in the nonsurgical endodontic retreatment of a molar with grade II furcation involvement

Endodontic therapy has a high survival rate, but in cases of post-treatment pathosis, retreatment may be required. This case report presents a similar case of endodontic failure which resulted in a coexistent periradicular-periodontal lesion. The case was managed by nonsurgical endodontic retreatment followed by photodynamic therapy in the periodontal region. Satisfactory results were obtained when the case was followed up clinically and radiographically for 18 months.
Chondrosarcoma in a dromedary camel (Camelus dromedarius)

A 4-year 10-month-old, intact female dromedary camel had progressive left carpal joint swelling and lameness for 7 months. Radiographs showed multifocal lytic lesions in the carpal and proximal metacarpal bones. Surgical biopsy of the synovial capsule and carpal bones suggested neoplasia, and the camel was subsequently euthanized. At necropsy, a white to pale pink, firm, multilobulated, soft tissue mass was located on the palmar aspect of the left carpal joint. Two smaller masses were present on the dorsal aspect of the carpal joint. The masses infiltrated all the carpal bones and the proximal region of the metacarpal bone. The joint capsule was diffusely thickened. The articular surfaces of the carpal bones and the metacarpal bone were multifocally eroded. The lungs contained multiple, firm, raised, gray, randomly distributed nodules. The neoplastic cells stained positive for vimentin and S-100. Chondrosarcoma arising from around the carpal joint with infiltration of carpal and metacarpal bones, and pulmonary metastasis, was diagnosed based on the histopathological and immunohistochemical evaluation.
Evaluating the OECD's forecasts for economic growth

The size and nature of the errors in GDP forecasts in the G-7 countries from 1968 to 1995 are examined. These GDP estimates are published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in OECD Economic Outlook. Two alternative hypotheses are tested concerning why revisions arise. The first hypothesis is that preliminary announcement is simply the true variable measured with error. In this case, the preliminary announcement is an unconditionally unbiased but irrational forecast of the true value. That is, the revision is correlated with known variables. In particular, it is correlated with the preliminary announcement itself. The second hypothesis is that revisions arise because the early GDP estimates are a rational forecast of the true variable. In this case, the error is a rational forecast error and is therefore uncorrelated with known information.
Temporal effective size estimates of a managed walleye Sander vitreus population and implications for genetic-based management.

The goal of this research was to use the long-term fishery data set and DNA from archived scales of walleye Sander vitreus in Escanaba Lake, WI, U.S.A. , to improve the understanding of the underlying mechanism(s) influencing genetic diversity in naturally recruiting populations. The introduced population of S. vitreus in Escanaba Lake has a low mean effective population size (N(E)) between 124.6 and 185.5 despite a mean census size (N(C)) of 4659 (N(E)/N(C)c. 0.04), suggesting an accelerated rate of genetic drift between 1952 and 2002. These values are smaller than the median N(E) range of several studies suggesting typical N(E)/N(C) ratios of 0.11-0.16 in a wide range of taxa. N(E) increased steadily during the past two sampled decades (1992 and 2002) and was consistent with a lowering of the variance in S. vitreus reproductive success, possibly linked to a large, sustained exploitation (mean 28%) rate. Variance in reproductive success is one of the most important factors influencing N(E) in species, like S. vitreus, which have a potential for large fecundities and large juvenile mortalities (type III survivorship). The N(B) estimates across six sequential cohorts (age classes of S. vitreus, assayed from 1994 to 1999) was consistent with estimates of N(E) reported for 1992-2002. These results, coupled with in-depth census and exploitation data, show that the genetic characteristics of Escanaba Lake S. vitreus have changed substantially and that management activities, such as supplemental stocking and harvest practices, have profoundly influenced the genetic dynamics of S. vitreus in this lake.
AMPA receptor modulation by cornichon‐2 dictated by transmembrane AMPA receptor regulatory protein isoform

Transmembrane AMPA receptor regulatory proteins (TARPs) are auxiliary subunits that modulate AMPA receptor trafficking, gating and pharmacology throughout the brain. Why cornichon‐2 (CNIH‐2), another AMPA receptor‐associated protein, modulates AMPA receptor gating and pharmacology in hippocampal neurons but not cerebellar granule neurons remains unresolved. Here, we report that CNIH‐2 differentially impacts Type‐Ia (γ‐2 or γ‐3) vs. Type‐Ib (γ‐4 or γ‐8) TARP‐containing AMPA receptors. Specifically, with AMPA receptors comprising γ‐2, the cerebellar‐enriched TARP isoform, CNIH‐2 decreases IKA/IGlu ratio and decreases cyclothiazide efficacy while having minimal impact on recovery from desensitization and deactivation kinetics. By contrast, with AMPA receptors comprising γ‐8, the hippocampal‐enriched TARP isoform, we find that CNIH‐2 slows deactivation kinetics, increases cyclothiazide potency and occludes a novel AMPA receptor kinetic phenomenon, namely resensitization. Additionally, we find that CNIH‐2 differentially modulates the glutamate off‐kinetics of γ‐8‐containing, but not γ‐2‐containing, AMPA receptors in a manner dependent upon the duration of agonist application. Together, these data demonstrate that the modulation of AMPA receptors by CNIH‐2 depends upon the TARP isoform composition within the receptor complex.