Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Un modèle économétrique de déséquilibre à deux secteurs et son apport à l'analyse des politiques économiques

[eng] A Disequilibrium Macroeconometric Model of the French Economy with two Sectors and Endogenous Investment Patrick Artus, Sanvi Avouyi-Dovi, Jean-Pierre Laffargue This paper presents a two sector, (tradable and non tradable) disequilibrium model, with endogenized investment, for France. The estimation results confirm those previously obtained both by aggregated disequilibrium models where keynesian unemployment prevailed after the second oil shock, as well as by the sectoral model or estimations of tradable goods export and import functions, when classical unemployment prevailed. Tradable sector production is constrained by profitable production capacity (classical unemployment) and the non tradable production sector (about two thirds of GDP) is limited by the weakness of demand. The simulations presented in the last part of the paper show how a two sector disequilibrium model with endogenized investment can improve political economic analysis. [fre] Cet article presente l'estimation, pour l'economie francaise, d'un modele de desequilibre distinguant le secteur expose a la concurrence internationale et le secteur abrite, ainsi que son utilisation pour l'etude de politiques economiques. Les resultats de l'estimation reconcilient ceux obtenus anterieurement avec des modeles agreges, qui concluaient a la predominance du chomage keynesien depuis le deuxieme choc petrolier et les travaux sectoriels portant sur les exportations de produits manufactures qui mettaient au contraire en evidence les contraintes resultant d'une insuffisance des capacites de production rentables (chomage classique). La production du secteur industriel a ete principalement limitee par les capacites de production rentables ; celle du secteur abrite, qui represente les deux tiers du PIB, par l'insuffisance de la demande. Les simulations presentees dans la derniere partie de l'article montrent l'enrichissement que peut apporter un modele de desequilibre a deux secteurs et investissement endogene a l'etude des politiques economiques.
Motives For Purchasing Artwork, Collectibles And Antiques

Art is disaggregated into tangible and intangible offerings. Intangible art is one-time experiences of aesthetical and nostalgic products with no post-consumption exchange value. Tangible art preserves post-consumption exchange value. While psychographics of the consumers of intangible art are well-established, consumers of tangible art are under-researched. This research identifies and measures 16 different motives that underlie the purchase of artwork, collectibles and antiques. Heavy-consumers are found to score significantly higher than light-consumers on 8 of these motives: expected price fairness (economic); social acceptability and group identification (normative); aesthetics, pleasure and immersion (hedonic); culture (intellectual); and harmony. Findings are discussed and implications and limitations are also included.
Hybrid word/Part-of-Arabic-Word Language Models for arabic text document recognition

This paper describes a simple approach to generate an efficient hybrid word/Part-of-Arabic-Word (PAW) Language Model (LM). More precisely, less frequent words in a full word vocabulary are decomposed into PAWs. The resulted PAWs are incorporated with the most frequent words to generate a hybrid word-PAW vocabulary which is used to estimate a hybrid flat n-gram statistical language model. For comparison purposes, language models with full PAW decomposition of the word vocabulary are generated. To assess the quality of the three types of LMs (i.e. full word, hybrid word/PAW and full PAW LMs), evaluation experiments are conducted under three different tasks using two benchmarking databases, namely Maurdor and Khatt. Results in terms of word error rate show that systems using the full PAW and the proposed hybrid LMs perform equally the same, and both of them, systematically, outperform systems using word LMs. However, systems using hybrid LMs require less memory than those using full PAW LMs.
Expectations, gender, and norms in migration decision-making.

This paper argues that expectations - the process of evaluating the chances for future attainment of valued goals in the home community (stay decision) vs. alternative locations (move decision) - along with family norms about migration are major predictors of intention to move, which in turn is a proximate determinant of migration behaviour. Utilizing longitudinal data from the 1992 and 1994 waves of the Thailand National Migration Survey, logistic regression models show that a strikingly different set of expectations, household demographic indicators, and migrant capital factors were significant determinants of migration intentions for men and women; reflecting Thai gender roles. Migration intentions, in turn, predicted more permanent, but not temporary, survival strategy migration behaviour, while low household income predicted temporary but not more permanent migration behaviour. The measure of perceived family migration norms was a powerful determinant of migration behaviour, but the size of migrant n.
Attributes and Attitudes of Students Enrolled in Agriculture Off- Campus Videotaped Courses

In 1979. an off-campus Master of Agriculture degree was approved and offered through the Professional Agriculture Curriculum at Iowa State University. An off-campus Bachelor of Science degree was approved and offered in 1991. The primary objective of the offcampus degree programs is to make quality post-secondary agricultural education available to individuals who are unable or prefer not to study on campus.
Audit-trail-based modelling of the decision-making process in Management and Accounting using sensitivity analysis

In a behavioural and organisational context, complex problems that reflect the multidimensional attributes of human activity inevitably arise and have to be addressed. In an attempt to model human decision-making behaviour, the vast number of potential parameters raises the question of how this complexity can be harnessed. This paper proposes a data-driven approach, with which dependencies or associations are extracted from the data itself. The complex and dynamic nature of modern business processes makes this approach more suitable, as the design of competent rule-based models or expert systems would be cumbersome, expensive or even infeasible. A hybrid behaviour-modelling method, based on both statistical component analysis and sensitivity analysis, is proposed to directly model decision behaviour. The derived model is the outcome of an optimisation process, where model-data matching is maximised in terms of known, pre-defined criteria. The implementation of the proposed intelligent system as an integral part of real-life business/accounting activity is discussed, and its capability to provide intelligent support to the decision making and internal control processes in management and accounting is demonstrated using realistic data from a business procurement application.
Does EU Enlargement Start a Race to the Bottom? Strategic Interaction among EU Member States in Social Policy

This article examines whether Eastern enlargement has led the EU 15 member states to enter strategic interactions implying a race to the bottom. The question is whether concerns about welfare migration have led to downward pressure on the EU 15 member states in the form of more restrictive access to their labour markets and adjustments of their social policy benefits. We find little empirical evidence to support the asumption that welfare states with generous benefits and accessible labour markets will become magnets for welfare migration. Nevertheless, the study demonstrates that the EU 15 member states do enter strategic interactions as if such migration would occur. The majority of them have temporarily restricted the free movement of workers from the acceding countries. EU 15 member states with the least restrictions are the ones most active in adjusting their social policies. Strategic interactions in social policy may thus intensify in the future as transitional periods come to an end and future enlargements come into place.
HETEROSCEDASTICITY AND EFFICIENT ESTIMATES OF BETA

2This study investigates the presence of conditional heteroscedasticity in the market model residual terms and the efficiency of beta estimates. Nonnormality and heteroscedasticity in the market model residual terms make the estimators inefficient and some of the significance tests invalid. An extension of the Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (ARCH) model, the Bollerslev’s Generalized Autoregressive Conditionally Heteroscedastic (GARCH) model, is applied to a sample composed of securities traded at the Budapest Stock Exchange, which allows us to test whether the conditional heteroscedasticity, mainly observed in the United States market, is also present in the Hungarian stock market.
Characterisation of the Chemical Composition and Structural Features of Novel Antimicrobial Nanoparticles

Three antimicrobial nanoparticle types (AMNP0, AMNP1, and AMNP2) produced using the TesimaTM thermal plasma technology were investigated and their compositions were determined using a combination of analytical methods. Scanning electron micrographs provided the morphology of these particles with observed sizes ranging from 10 to 50 nm, whilst FTIR spectra confirmed the absence of polar bonds and organic impurities, and strong Raman active vibrational bands at ca. 1604 and 1311 cm−1 ascribed to C–C vibrational motions were observed. Carbon signals that resonated at δC 126 ppm in the solid state NMR spectra confirmed that sp2 hybridised carbons were present in high concentration in two of the nanoparticle types (AMNP1 and AMNP2). X-ray powder diffraction suggested that AMNP0 contains single phase Tungsten carbide (WC) in a high state of purity and multiple phases of WC/WC1-x were identified in both AMNP1 and AMNP2. Finally, X-ray photoelectron spectral (XPS) analyses revealed and quantified the elemental ratios in these composite formulations.
Impact of SO(2) on Arabidopsis thaliana transcriptome in wildtype and sulfite oxidase knockout plants analyzed by RNA deep sequencing.

High concentrations of sulfur dioxide (SO(2) ) as an air pollutant, and its derivative sulfite, cause abiotic stress that can lead to cell death. It is currently unknown to what extent plant fumigation triggers specific transcriptional responses. To address this question, and to test the hypothesis that sulfite oxidase (SO) is acting in SO(2) detoxification, we compared Arabidopsis wildtype (WT) and SO knockout lines (SO-KO) facing the impact of 600 nl l(-1) SO(2) , using RNAseq to quantify absolute transcript abundances. These transcriptome data were correlated to sulfur metabolism-related enzyme activities and metabolites obtained from identical samples in a previous study. SO-KO plants exhibited remarkable and broad regulative responses at the mRNA level, especially in transcripts related to sulfur metabolism enzymes, but also in those related to stress response and senescence. Focusing on SO regulation, no alterations were detectable in the WT, whereas in SO-KO plants we found up-regulation of two splice variants of the SO gene, although this gene is not functional in this line. Our data provide evidence for the highly specific coregulation between SO and sulfur-related enzymes like APS reductase, and suggest two novel candidates for involvement in SO(2) detoxification: an apoplastic peroxidase, and defensins as putative cysteine mass storages.
The Motivation of Social Entrepreneurs: The Roles, Agendas and Relations of Altruistic Economic Actors

Abstract Social entrepreneurs present a contradiction if one accepts that economic motivation is premised on personal gain alone. The economic activity of social entrepreneurs is presumed altruistic, their actions intending to primarily benefit others. The theoretical and actual motivations, social networks and values of these actors are compared in this article. A series of semi-structured interviews of prominent social entrepreneurs in the west of England form the basis of analysis. Subjects were selected through a nomination-referral technique that allows targeting for interview those who are considered prominent in the sector within the chosen location. Two types of analysis are attempted: a narrative exploration of their motivations and a semantic networks analysis of their statements. There is evidence of a conceptual association between those actors’ success, entrepreneurship, motivation and social relations that indicate profitable avenues for future research. Some policy recommendations are offered in the conclusion. The multiple roles of social entrepreneurs and the multiple audiences they address indicate multidimensional agency. The development of the sector depends on comprehending conflict inherent in their multiple agendas.
Impact of Electroviscosity on the Hydraulic Conductance of the Bordered Pit Membrane: A Theoretical Investigation1[C]

Electroviscous effects in the bordered pit membrane may impact the overall hydraulic conductance of xylem and explain the ion-mediated changes in conductance observed in perfusion experiments. In perfusion experiments, the hydraulic conductance of stem segments () responds to changes in the properties of the perfusate, such as the ionic strength (), pH, and cationic identity. We review the experimental and theoretical work on this phenomenon. We then proceed to explore the hypothesis that electrokinetic effects in the bordered pit membrane (BPM) contribute to this response. In particular, we develop a model based on electroviscosity in which hydraulic conductance of an electrically charged porous membrane varies with the properties of the electrolyte. We use standard electrokinetic theory, coupled with measurements of electrokinetic properties of plant materials from the literature, to determine how the conductance of BPMs, and therefore , may change due to electroviscosity. We predict a nonmonotonic variation of with with a maximum reduction of 18%. We explore how this reduction depends on the characteristics of the sap and features of the BPM, such as pore size, density of chargeable sites, and their dissociation constant. Our predictions are consistent with changes in observed for physiological values of sap and pH. We conclude that electroviscosity is likely responsible, at least partially, for the electrolyte dependence of conductance through pits and that electroviscosity may be strong enough to play an important role in other transport processes in xylem. We conclude by proposing experiments to differentiate the impact of electroviscosity on from that of other proposed mechanisms.
Alteration in the Low-Frequency Domain in Power Spectral Analysisof Fetal Heart Beat Fluctuations

Objective: Spectral analysis was conducted on fetal heart rate fluctuations for the purpose of investigating the change in gestational age and examining the usefulness as a method of estimating fetal blood gas. Study Design: Five hundred and twenty-nine pregnant women with a single normal fetus and 26 women with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) were studied during the 20th to 38th gestational weeks. In cases of IUGR, fetal blood gas levels were evaluated with percutaneous umbilical blood sampling. A time series of fetal heart rate fluctuation was obtained with a 1.15-MHz ultrasonic transducer, and power spectral analysis of 200 consecutive stable beats was performed with an autoregression method. Integrated areas of 0.025–0.125 cycles/beat were defined as low-frequency areas (LFAs) and were examined in normal fetuses. In addition, the relation between LFA and fetal blood gas values was studied. Results: As pregnancy progressed, LFA increased with a cubic regression equation (Y = 6.484 – 0.764X + 0.029X2 – 0.00034X3). The correlation coefficient was 0.625 (p < 0.05). In the cases of IUGR, ΔLFA was highly correlated with ΔpO2 and ΔpH (correlation coefficient, 0.650 and 0.618, respectively). Conclusions: Measurement of LFA provides insight into the development of fetal autonomic function and also may serve as a quantitative index of fetal well-being in mid-pregnancy.
Refugees’ resettlement in a Canadian mid-sized Prairie city: examining experiences of multiple forced migrations

PURPOSE The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experiences of multiple forced migrations and resettlement among two refugee families in a mid-sized Canadian city. METHODS Case studies are located within the contingencies of the participants' lives and the meanings they provide to the events. A postcolonial feminist perspective guided the data analysis to explore the micro-level of individual experiences that unfold within a raced, gendered, and classed reality. Open-ended interviews, participant observation, and field notes were used to collect participants' perspectives. Data were collected until saturation occurred. FINDINGS An in-depth analysis of these two case studies revealed that lack of choice and lack of access to health and social services affect health through constant revival of traumatic past experiences prior to arrival to Canada. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: first, shared experiences of forced migrations; second, the past and present: construction of new identities; and third, resettlement challenges and opportunities. These themes overlap and intersect to shape the experiences of double forced migration. COMMENTS This research has limitations related to the sample size but provides data on a topic that deserves more attention in the field of immigrant and health studies. The authors argue that health and social professionals must resist "finalizing" refugees into disempowered identities that undermine human agency. VALUE Research on resettlement experiences after forced migration is a burgeoning field in refugee studies. The originality lies in drawing on Bahktin to develop practical implications to guide health and social practice in this area marked by racialization and fundamentalism. Keywords: Bakhtin, Dialogism, Postcolonial theory, Forced migration, Non-western refugee health, Pre/post-migration, Racialization, Refugee identity
Bayesian estimation of genetic parameters for growth and carcass traits of grass-fed beef cattle by Full Conjugate Gibbs

Growth and carcass data of Angus cattle were used to estimate heritabilities and genetic and environmental correlations between growth and carcass traits by means of a Bayesian data augmentation (DA) algorithm. Records were taken on 739 Angus steers from 31 sires, during 10 years of a designed progeny test. The cattle were entirely fed on grass during their lifelong. Growth traits evaluated were birth (BW), weaning (WW) and 18-month (W18) weights; and carcass traits were the weights of half the carcass (HCW), of hind "pistola" cut (HPW) and of three retail cuts (ECW). The model used for estimation was a multiple trait additive animal model. The prior densities used in the analyses were the multivariate normal for the fixed effects (with very large variances) and for the breeding values, and the inverted Wishart for the additive and environmental covariance matrices. The observed residual vector was augmented with sampled residuals for missing traits. The total number of samples drawn was 200,000. The heritabilities of growth traits increased with age at measure, and those of carcass traits were of sizeable magnitude. Whereas estimates of the genetic correlations were similar to those found in the literature for cattle fed on concentrates, environmental correlations were lower. Additive correlations between growth traits with either the HPW or ECW, were smaller than the correlations between growth characters and HCW.
Simulation with large econometric models: The quest for a solution

This paper describes the development of algorithms to solve large-scale macroeconometric models. The bulk of this paper was written in 1970 when the problem of finding solutions for these large-scale models was still an issue. During the 1960s, large powerful (for that time period) computers became available for use by economists who proceeded to use this powerful new tool to develop and apply econometric software to the problem of estimating large-scale macroeconometric models such as the Wharton Quarterly Model and the Brookings Model. Having succeeded in estimating these models, the next problem was to find a way to solve them either in the context of simulation experiments or forecasting exercises. During the late 1960s, the author investigated the problem of solving these large-scale models and found several acceptable methods which are presented in this paper.
Exploring critical success factors of knowledge management projects in the consulting sector

Knowledge management (KM) and critical success factors (CSFs) are interesting issues in the current business world. Knowledge is an important driving force for business success and competiveness, especially in the consulting industry whose core business is to sell knowledge itself. Previous works suggested a positive relation between the CSF and the success of a KM project, but only few of them related it in a quantitative way. This paper aims to identify the CSF in a consulting firm (strategic, cultural and technological factors) and to build a success model for designing KM projects based on these CSF identified. This model was tested using structured equation model. With this study we contribute to recognising the importance of these success factors in a KM project in the consulting industry to achieve the maximum success.
A Novel Integrative Conjugative Element Mediates Genetic Transfer from Group G Streptococcus to Other β-Hemolytic Streptococci

ABSTRACT Lateral gene transfer is a significant contributor to the ongoing evolution of many bacterial pathogens, including β-hemolytic streptococci. Here we provide the first characterization of a novel integrative conjugative element (ICE), ICESde3396, from Streptococcus dysgalactiae subsp. equisimilis (group G streptococcus [GGS]), a bacterium commonly found in the throat and skin of humans. ICESde3396 is 64 kb in size and encodes 66 putative open reading frames. ICESde3396 shares 38 open reading frames with a putative ICE from Streptococcus agalactiae (group B streptococcus [GBS]), ICESa2603. In addition to genes involves in conjugal processes, ICESde3396 also carries genes predicted to be involved in virulence and resistance to various metals. A major feature of ICESde3396 differentiating it from ICESa2603 is the presence of an 18-kb internal recombinogenic region containing four unique gene clusters, which appear to have been acquired from streptococcal and nonstreptococcal bacterial species. The four clusters include two cadmium resistance operons, an arsenic resistance operon, and genes with orthologues in a group A streptococcus (GAS) prophage. Streptococci that naturally harbor ICESde3396 have increased resistance to cadmium and arsenate, indicating the functionality of genes present in the 18-kb recombinogenic region. By marking ICESde3396 with a kanamycin resistance gene, we demonstrate that the ICE is transferable to other GGS isolates as well as GBS and GAS. To investigate the presence of the ICE in clinical streptococcal isolates, we screened 69 isolates (30 GGS, 19 GBS, and 20 GAS isolates) for the presence of three separate regions of ICESde3396. Eleven isolates possessed all three regions, suggesting they harbored ICESde3396-like elements. Another four isolates possessed ICESa2603-like elements. We propose that ICESde3396 is a mobile genetic element that is capable of acquiring DNA from multiple bacterial sources and is a vehicle for dissemination of this DNA through the wider β-hemolytic streptococcal population.