Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Constraints to the Adoption of Agricultural Innovations

This paper argues that much of the discussion about constraints to the adoption of agricultural innovations is muddled because the distinction between variables that are endogenous to the fit between an innovation and a specified group of potential users, and those that are exogenous (that is, prerequisite conditions), is seldom made explicit during the innovation-development process. This distinction, which can emerge through a design-specification exercise, locates a much greater degree of responsibility for the eventual adoption outcome – whether positive or negative – within the innovation-development process itself. To continue to cite exogenous factors such as inappropriate land-tenure arrangements or lack of output markets as constraints to the adoption of innovations is to miss a fundamental step within the innovation-development process.
Determinants of long-distance investing by business angels in the UK

The business angel market is usually identified as a local market, and the proximity of an investment has been shown to be key in the angel's investment preferences and an important filter at the screening stage of the investment decision. This is generally explained by the personal and localized networks used to identify potential investments, the hands-on involvement of the investor and the desire to minimize risk. However, a significant minority of investments are long distance. This paper is based on data from 373 investments made by 109 UK business angels. We classify the location of investments into three groups: local investments (those made within the same county or in adjacent counties); intermediate investments (those made in counties adjacent to the ‘local’ counties); and long-distance investments (those made beyond this range). Using ordered logit analysis the paper develops and tests a number of hypotheses that relate long-distance investment to investment characteristics and investor characteristics. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications for entrepreneurs seeking business angel finance in investment-deficient regions, business angel networks seeking to match investors to entrepreneurs and firms (which are normally their primary clients), and for policy-makers responsible for local and regional economic development.
The Evolution of Technologies: An Assessment of the State-of-the-Art

Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines who have studied technological advance in some detail have converged on the proposition that technological advance needs to be understood as proceeding through an evolutionary process characterized by multiple search efforts, deep intertechnological differences in the ways potential opportunities are tagged, ubiquitous uncertainty and innovation-driven competition among firms. In this work we survey the state-of-the-art in the analysis of such evolutionary processes. We start by asking whether there are some invariances in the knowledge structure and in the ways technological knowledge accumulates and, together, what distinguishes different fields and different periods of technological advance, if any. Next we address (i) the differences across paradigms in terms of nature and sources of innovative opportunities; (ii) the mechanisms of appropriation of economic returns from innovative activities; (iii) the role of demand and other socio-economic factors in shaping the directions of technological advances; (iv) the possibility of identifying discrete families sectors, distinct according to their sources of innovative knowledge and modes of innovating; (v) the relationships between the nature of productive knowledge and the distribution of input coefficients across firms; (vi) the patterns of innovation diffusion; and, finally, (vii) we discuss the role of history in the evolution of technologies, that is their path-dependence.
Further Evidence for Chemopreventive Potential of β-Carotene Against Experimental Carcinogenesis: Diethylnitrosamine-Initiated and Phenobarbital-Promoted Hepatocarcinogenesis Is Prevented More Effectively by β-Carotene Than by Retinoic Acid

The comparative effectiveness of β-carotene (BC) and retinoic acid (RA) was investigated against two-stage rat liver carcinogenesis initiated by a single injection of diethylnitrosamine (DEN, 200 mg/kg ip) followed by promotion with phenobarbital (PB, 0.05%) in a basal diet. BC (500 mg/kg) or RA (200 mg/kg) was administered per os daily throughout the entire experiment, before the initiation, or during the promotional stage. Treatment with BC throughout the experiment or before initiation significantly reduced the incidence (p < 0.01), multiplicity (p < 0.05), and size of visible subcapsular hepatocyte nodules (HNs) and reduced (p < 0.001 or 0.05) nodular volume as a percentage of liver volume. The results with RA were of lesser extent than those observed with BC. There was a considerable depletion of hepatic BC and total vitamin A (retinol + ester) in HNs and nonnodular surrounding parenchyma (NNSP) of rats subjected to the DEN-PB regimen than their control counterparts. Treatment with BC significantly elevated hepatic BC and total vitamin A contents in HNs and NNSP compared with DEN-PB control, and the elevation was proportional to the duration of BC treatment. Long-term BC or RA treatment elicited a substantial decrement in reduced glutathione content and γ-glutamyltranspeptidase activity and an increment in cytochrome P-450 content and glutathione peroxidase and glutathione S-transferase activities in the HNs and NNSP, which were otherwise reversed in rats that received DEN-PB treatment alone. Our results suggest that BC or RA has the potential to inhibit DEN-induced hepatocarcinogenesis through selective modulation of the antioxidant defense system and xenobiotic detoxification in the liver. It is also apparent that the beneficial effect of BC or RA is primarily exerted on the initiation phase and secondarily during the promotional stage of DEN-initiated rat liver carcinogenesis and that BC affords a better chemopreventive response than RA.
Supranational, Intergovernmental or Demoicratic Legitimacy? Citizens’ Evaluations of the EU

Abstract The legitimacy of the EU is more contested than ever. In theory, different criteria and levels are proposed by supranational, intergovernmental or demoicratic approaches. This paper investigates in an explorative way which of these approaches EU citizens apply when they evaluate the EU. This subjective legitimacy is operationalised as generalised support for the EU influenced by other types of support. In order to capture the various latent constructs, criteria, levels and interactions, we apply structural equation modelling on Eurobarometer data on the 27 member states from 2009. Our results are mixed. The importance of European identity corresponds to a supranational approach. In contrast, the influence of individual representation on the EU level is fully mediated by representation via one's country which is in line with an intergovernmental approach. The close relationship between evaluation criteria on the national and supranational level, in turn, strengthens the case for a demoicratic approach.
Digital terrain model extraction in SUAS clearance survey using LiDar data

With the development of small unmanned aerial systems (SUAS), the flight safety issues in low altitude has become a research focus. Clearance survey is used for locating obstacles in the airspace to ensure flight safety. In this paper, we employ LiDAR to generate digital terrain model (DTM) for achieving clearance survey. In our method, filters are designed to eliminate the abnormal data points and grids are used for recognizing obstacles. According to the principle of flight risk minimization, a maximum elevation based method is proposed to produce the digital surface model (DSM) and realize the DTM extraction. Combining the derived DTM and DSM, the low altitude space are divided into zones to ensure the flight safety of SUAS. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. By varying the window size of the filters for processing LiDAR datasets, further improvements can be achieved.
Cruise Passenger Terminals, Spatial Planning and Regeneration: The Cases of Amsterdam and Rotterdam

Recent growth in the cruise tourism industry has been accompanied by the development of new cruise passenger terminals in many port cities, in part to assist aims for spatial planning and urban regeneration. Such terminals can bring specific benefits but also problems, though application of spatial planning and related policy can help to maximize benefits and ameliorate or mitigate problems. The cases of cruise terminal developments in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands are illustrative in this context, and offer lessons for spatial planning and regeneration involving cruise tourism elsewhere.
Are there cultural limits to tourism

This article poses the question: are there cultural limits to tourism? It argues that tourism is a culture industry in the sense that it markets cultural products to tourists as cultural experiences. The three elements of tourism as culture are: the cultural foundations of tourism products, the sophistication of tourists’ perceptions and experiences of tourist cultures, and the cultural consequences of tourism development on resident communities. Yet these aspects are usually treated in a tokenistic way in favour of economic and environmental considerations, ignoring the cultural consequences of major changes to destination communities as a result of tourist development. This article proposes that the changes and consequences of tourism on the culture of destinations and on the culture of tourists should be central to debates about sustainable tourism development. The article proposes a number of conditions or indicators to identify the matrix of impacts of tourism from which acceptable and unacceptable l.
A concept for the standardized detection of disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow from patients with primary breast cancer and its clinical implementation

Numerous single‐institutional studies and a large pooled analysis have demonstrated that the presence of disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in the bone marrow (BM) from patients with primary, nonmetastatic breast cancer (Stages I‐III) is associated with impaired prognosis. To date, sampling of BM and assessment of DTCs is not considered a routine procedure in the clinical management of breast cancer patients; however, emerging data suggest a future role for risk stratification and monitoring of therapeutic efficacy. Because these clinical options need to be evaluated in trials to verify the principle of this concept in the clinical setting, agreement on the standardized detection of DTCs is necessary. Consequently, the German, Austrian, and Swiss Societies for Senology recently formed a panel 1) to review and discuss the existing methodologies, 2) to find a consensus for a standardized detection of DTCs, and 3) to explore the options for its clinical implementation. Cancer 2006. © 2006 American Cancer Society.
α1‐Adrenergic receptor control of the cerebral vasculature in humans at rest and during exercise

• What is the central question of this study? Despite the abundance of sympathetic nerve fibres emanating from the cervical and stellate ganglia that innervate the cerebral arteries, the role of the sympathetic nervous system in regulation of cerebral vasculature in humans remains equivocal. • What is the main finding and its importance? The findings from this study support the role of the sympathetic nervous system, mediated by activation of α1‐adrenoreceptors, in dynamic cerebral autoregulation and cerebral vascular tone at rest and during moderate dynamic exercise. Blockade of the α1‐adrenoreceptors impaired dynamic cerebral autoregulation and attenuated any increases in cerebral vascular tone during moderate dynamic exercise in healthy humans.
The Role of Redox Dysregulation in the Inflammatory Response to Acute Myocardial Ischaemia-reperfusion Injury - Adding Fuel to the Fire.

BACKGROUND The inflammatory response to acute myocardial ischaemia/ reperfusion injury (IRI) plays a critical role in determining myocardial infarct (MI) size, and subsequent post-MI left ventricular (LV) remodelling, making it a potential therapeutic target for improving clinical outcomes in patients presenting with an acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Recent experimental studies using advanced imaging and molecular techniques, have yielded new insights into the mechanisms through which reactive oxygen species (ROS) contribute to the inflammatory response induced by acute myocardial IRI - "adding fuel to the fire". The infiltration of inflammatory cells into the MI zone, leads to elevated myocardial concentrations of ROS, cytokine release, and activation of apoptotic and necrotic death pathways. Anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory therapies have failed to protect the heart against acute myocardial IRI. This may be, in part, due to a lack of understanding of the time course, nature and mechanisms of the inflammation and redox dysregulation, which occur in the setting of acute myocardial IRI. CONCLUSION In this article, we examine the inflammatory response and redox dysregulation induced by acute myocardial IRI, and highlight potential therapeutic options for targeting redox dysregulation, in order to attenuate the detrimental effects of the inflammatory response following an AMI, so as to reduce MI size and prevent heart failure.
The Dynamism of Organizational Practices: The Role of Employment Blueprints

This paper explores how founders’ blueprints affect the dynamism of organizational practices, and in particular the capability to sustain as well as change practices. First, a theoretical argument is developed on the critical role of founders’ blueprints of the employment model, which are difficult to alter and mark firms’ future paths by affecting the dynamism of organizational practices over an extended period of time. Subsequently, case studies of several organizational practices in three management consulting firms in the USA, the Netherlands and the UK illustrate how founders’ conceptions of the employment relationship (i.e. their employment model) affect the way in which competing demands of continuity and renewal are addressed. Moreover, engineering- or commitment-oriented blueprints appear to facilitate the capability to adapt, while autocratic blueprints do not.
Modification of Clearview Tuberculosis (TB) Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay for TB Patients Not Infected with HIV

ABSTRACT Diagnosis of active tuberculosis by detection of urinary lipoarabinomannan (uLAM) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an attractive approach. Concentrating urine 100-fold allowed quantitation of uLAM at levels equal to picograms/ml of nonconcentrated urine. The approach of concentrating urine 100-fold improved the clinical sensitivity of the Clearview TB enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) from 7% to 57% yet impaired its specificity from 97% to 89%. (This study has been registered at University Hospital of Turku under registration no. 47/180/2009, Helsinki University Central Hospital under 149/2010, University Hospital of Kuopio under 105/2010, and China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, under DMR-99-IRB-075-2.)
Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Antimicrobial Drugs in Intensive Care Unit Patients

ABSTRACT Inappropriate use of antimicrobial drugs is responsible for therapeutic failures, increased mortality rates, and the emergence of resistance. Antimicrobial activity is determined by intrinsic pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics concepts. In critically ill patients, an inappropriate dosing regimen can be caused by the inability of an antimicrobial drug to reach adequate concentrations at the infection site owing to alterations in the drug’s pharmacokinetics caused by pathophysiological changes. Understanding these concepts and changes in PK-PD parameters that occur in intensive care unit patients is crucial for the optimization of antimicrobial therapy in these patients.
The Information Ratio

Despite the widespread use of information ratios to gauge the performance of active money managers, confusion persists over how to calculate an information ratio, how to interpret it, and what constitutes a “good” one. The argument here is that the simplest form and interpretation of the ratio is the most useful for investors. This article clarifies the relationship between an information ratio and a t-statistic, compares four methods of annualizing an information ratio, and presents the empirical evidence on the distribution of information ratios by style, which provides a context in which to examine manager performance.
Fault-Tolerant Operation of a Battery-Energy-Storage System Based on a Multilevel Cascade PWM Converter With Star Configuration

This paper focuses on fault-tolerant control for a battery-energy-storage system based on a multilevel cascade pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) converter with star configuration. During the occurrence of a single-converter-cell or single-battery-unit fault, the fault-tolerant control enables continuous operation and maintains state-of-charge balancing of the remaining healthy battery units. This enhances both system reliability and availability. A 200-V, 10-kW, 3.6-kW·h laboratory system combining a three-phase cascade PWM converter with nine nickel-metal-hydride battery units is designed, constructed, and tested to verify the validity and effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant control.
Utilizing The Delphi Technique In Policy Discussion: A Case Study Of A Privatized Utility In Britain

A challenge for social policy makers is to explore consensus and dissensus in issues where approaches such as roundtable meetings and focus groups are not feasible or likely to provide accurate information. The Delphi survey technique is a powerful tool for exploring social policy issues not as widely used as it deserves. This article explores Delphi and describes its application to a major and highly contentious public policy issue; how the electricity supply industry should respond to customers in debt. Our experience demonstrates how expertise and opinions of individuals who either would not or could not normally cooperate can be brought together to achieve a consensus, resulting in policy changes that lead to measurable social welfare gains. It illustrates Delphi’s strength as a policy tool that recognizes the multiplicity of interests involved in such issues, the value of different kinds of front-line expertise and the desirability of proceeding on the basis of a consensus of informed opinion.
Groove depth determination based on extended leakage factor in a 12-slot 10-pole machine

Presence of subharmonic components is a common feature of fractional slot machines, and the subharmonic is a main cause of rotor PM eddy current losses. As an effort to reduce the fundamental component of a 12-slot 10-pole motor, flux barriers are provided by making grooves on the back iron. The optimal groove depth ratio is found based on a extended (weighted) leakage factor by harmonic distance from the working harmonic number. The extended leakage factor reflects the PM loss by each harmonic component. The result is verified via finite element analysis (FEA).
Rodeo: Sparse, greedy nonparametric regression

We present a greedy method for simultaneously performing local bandwidth selection and variable selection in nonparametric regression. The method starts with a local linear estimator with large bandwidths, and incrementally decreases the bandwidth of variables for which the gradient of the estimator with respect to bandwidth is large. The method¯called rodeo (regularization of derivative expectation operator)¯conducts a sequence of hypothesis tests to threshold derivatives, and is easy to implement. Under certain assumptions on the regression function and sampling density, it is shown that the rodeo applied to local linear smoothing avoids the curse of dimensionality, achieving near optimal minimax rates of convergence in the number of relevant variables, as if these variables were isolated in advance.
Stock return volatility and trading volume: evidence from the chinese stock market

This study investigates the dynamic relationship between stock return volatility and trading volume for individual stocks listed on the Chinese stock market as well as market portfolios of these stocks. We found that the inclusion of trading volume, which is used as a proxy of information arrival, in the GARCH specification reduces the persistence of the conditional variance dramatically, and the volume effect is positive and statistically significant in all the cases for individual stocks. Consistent with our analysis of the institutional and ownership structure of listed Chinese companies, trading volume is found to play a role of proxies of information arrivals for the two B share portfolios, but not for the two A share portfolios. Our conclusion is that the information-based effect helps in explaining the GARCH effect to a large extent. Nevertheless, GARCH does not completely vanish as a result of this inclusion.
Trade Policy and Mixed Enterprises

This paper demonstrates that the degree of state ownership affects neither the level of socially optimal activities nor welfare if the government chooses optimal trade policy instruments. In the case of rivalry in the home market, the optimal import tariff is independent of the degree of state ownership, and the optimal production subsidy decreases with state ownership if the optimal tariff is positive. For the case of Cournot rivalry in a third market, the optimal export subsidy increases with state ownership, while in the case of Bertrand rivalry with differentiated products, the optimal export tax increases with state ownership.
Predictors of Personal Best Performance in the Hammer Throw for U.S. Collegiate Throwers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the variables that contributed most to maximum throwing distance in the hammer throw event in track and field. A 41-item survey instrument was developed to collect data regarding national level collegiate hammer throwers throughout the United States. Multiple regression analysis for hammer throw personal record (PR) yielded a significant model (r=0.811, p≤0.001) with the following predictors: number of throws per year, number of years throwing the hammer, NCAA division, back squat, and type of hammer technique. The model explained in excess of 65% of the variance in hammer technique among the respondents (r2=0.658). These results provide quantitative information for coaches and athletes involved in the hammer throw event about the importance of years of experience, volume of training and strength levels. Furthermore, the results may provide some insight into the obstacles and barriers limiting the development of US hammer throwers.
Performance Comparison of DSF-, HNLF-, and Bi-NLF-based Optical Phase Conjugators

Optical phase conjugators (OPCs) constructed by dispersion-shifted fiber (DSF), highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF), and new coming bismuth oxide-based nonlinear fiber (Bi-NLF) are evaluated and compared by computer simulation. Under the limitation of commercially available pump power, we show that HNLF-based OPC is preferable for employing in the transmission system owing to its sufficiently high signal quality.