Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
When institutions matter: a gravity model for Chinese meat imports

Purpose In international trade differences in political and legal systems confront trading partners with relatively greater information asymmetry and contract enforcement problems than in domestic trade, resulting in higher transaction costs. Nevertheless, well-functioning institutions in the exporting country could prove beneficial for the agricultural importer, as institutions generally establish food and product regulations and ensure that they are enforced and serve as a last resort for dispute resolution and contract enforcement. Given China’s increasingly stricter control of its food supply chain and its rising imports of meat products, the purpose of this paper is to analyze whether institutions in the exporting country matter for Chinese meat imports. Design/methodology/approach To analyze the effect of the exporters’ institutions on Chinese meat imports, the authors estimate a gravity model for the 1990-2013 period. The authors apply the method suggested by Helpman et al. (2008) to correct for sample selection and firm heterogeneity. To estimate the effect of time-invariant variables, the authors apply the Fixed Effects Vector Decomposition method proposed by Plümper and Troeger (2007). Findings The results show that institutions affect Chinese trade flows. In particular, the authors find that China imports more meat products from countries who host qualitatively better institutions and are geographically closer, and that the country’s imports rise with its GDP level. This confirms our hypothesis that institutions in the exporting country are positively associated with meat exports to China. Originality/value The importance of the exporters’ institutions for Chinese meat imports has not been studied so far and is of great interest given China’s rising role as a sizable importer. Furthermore, Chinese meat imports have attracted much attention recently due to the country’s potentially significant impact on world food security and sustainable development. Hence, this paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the literature, both from a scientific and a policy perspective.
Multiple Perspectives on Understanding Innovation with IT in an Early Childhood Education and Care Organisation

Page iii Abstract Objective: To better understand how innovating with information technology (IT), conceptualised as a process of IT appropriation, unfolds within an early childhood education and care (ECEC) organisation. Research questions: By developing two different theoretical frameworks based on two different ontologies, a set of five research questions were created to achieve the research objective. Firstly, by utilising a tri-perspective framework grounded in a substantialist ontology to investigate the IT appropriation process, the following three research questions are posed: RQ1: What specific facilitators exist which support the appropriation of IT? RQ2: What specific barriers exist which hinder the appropriation of IT? RQ3: How does the IT appropriation process unfold as an interactive process? Secondly, by utilising a sociomaterial framework grounded in a relational ontology, the following additional two research questions are posed: RQ4: How can the IT appropriation process be understood as a reconfiguration of the holism of material equipment, performed activity, and social identity that constitutes the world of the ECEC employees? RQ5: How is the change in the way of being of IT within the process of IT appropriation clarified through an understanding of enacted accommodations in response to emergent resistance encountered during the IT appropriation process? Methodology: A qualitative interpretive case study with ‘mini embedded’ cases of eight centres of an ECEC organisation was conducted. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with educators, centre directors and other stakeholders, and supplemented by participant observation and collection of secondary documentation and artefacts in both video and textual form. This resulted in a rich set of data reflecting the reality of ECEC organisational employees’ experiences of appropriating IT into their work practices. Major findings: Findings obtained through the application of the tri-perspective framework identified human, organisational, and environmental facilitators and barriers and how they
Dementia Deficits Scale: Rating Self-Awareness of Deficits

Impaired deficit awareness is important to detect because of its clinical implications; for example, patients with impaired awareness are more likely to engage in potentially dangerous activities, such as operating the stove. This study evaluated the reliability and validity of the Dementia Deficits Scale (DDS), a new multidimensional instrument for the assessment of self-awareness of cognitive, emotional, and functional deficits associated with dementia. Three parallel forms of the DDS were independently completed by the patient, clinician, and informant. The DDS yields two measures of deficit awareness: the discrepancy between clinician and patient assessments of the patient’s deficits, and the discrepancy between informant and patient assessments. The DDS demonstrated adequate reliability and good divergent and convergent validity. Clinician and informant reports each added unique information, highlighting the importance of including both perspectives in the awareness assessment process. The DDS is recommended as a reliable and valid tool for the clinical and empirical assessment of deficit awareness in patients with dementia.
Cognitive Control andPrehospital Endotracheal Intubation

Prehospital endotracheal intubation (ETI) is a commonly performed but complex procedure. Cognitive psychology is a science describing how humans organize andprocess thoughts, including those used in complex operations. We use Rasmussen's Skills-Rules-Knowledge (SRK) framework to highlight the cognitive complexities of prehospital ETI. These findings have important implications for prehospital education andcare.
Fiscal Consolidation and Macroeconomic Variables in India: A Cointegration Analysis

Fiscal consolidation is in the forefront of policy discussion in India since 1990s. But the debate on fiscal consolidation and its real effects has been unable to attain any culmination so far on analytical as well as empirical grounds. The present paper tries to examine the impact of fiscal consolidation on growth, inflation, private investment, and exchange rate in India by analysing a time series data for the period from 1980-81 to 2013-14. The paper observes that there exists a long run relationship between GDP, fiscal consolidation, inflation and private investment. Fiscal deficit reduces GDP significantly. This finding gives empirical support to the neoclassical school of thought. However, the paper does not find any significant crowding-out evidence in India. The conclusion as such is sensitive to lag selection, and inclusion of variables. Although necessary diagnostic checking has been done, a robust analysis warrants a longer time series. The question remains inconclusive that if fiscal deficit does not cause significant crowding-out of private investment, then what are the channels of its negative influence on GDP.
Protective role of silent information regulator 1 against hepatic ischemia: effects on oxidative stress injury, inflammatory response, and MAPKs

ABSTRACT Objective: Previous studies have verified that silent information regulator 1 (SIRT1), a class III histone deacetylase, protects against ischemia reperfusion (IR) injury (IRI) in some organs. In this study, we examined whether SIRT1 could protect against hepatic IRI and explored the potential mechanisms. Research design and methods: We examined whether SIRT1 could protect against hepatic IRI in vivo and in vitro using hepatic-specific SIRT1−/- mice, SIRT1 siRNA-transfected hepatocytes and SIRT1+/+ hepatocytes. Results: The expression and activity of SIRT1 were significantly reduced during reperfusion compared with that observed in the control group. Hepatic-specific SIRT1−/- mice exhibited significant increase of hepatic damage markers and augment of oxidative stress and inflammatory response compared with control mice. In vitro studies demonstrated similar results. Furthermore, SIRT1 upregulation protects against hepatic IRI, through the overexpression of p-JNK, p-p38MAPK, and p-ERK. The protection of SIRT1 can be effectively reversed by the inhibitors of p38MAPK, JNK, and ERK. Conclusion: The activation of SIRT1 significantly inhibits the oxidative stress and inflammatory response during hepatic IRI, which can be developed as a novel method to protect against hepatic IRI.
Post-occlusive reactive hyperemia in single nutritive capillaries of the nail fold: methodological considerations

Endothelial function at the arterial level has been extensively assessed by a noninvasive method using flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) of the brachial artery. Early disturbances have been found in patient groups prone to later development of manifest macrovascular atherosclerosis. A possible non-invasive means of studying blood-flow regulation and function at the microcirculatory level is through videophotometric capillaroscopy. The most stable variable in such an investigation is the time-to-peak (TtP) flow after a brief arterial occlusion. The short-term reproducibility of such assessments is excellent but the coefficient of variation (CV) in long-term studies is reported to be in the order of slightly less than 20%. The aim of the present methodological study was to evaluate different sources of variations in such microcirculatory assessments in order to be able to propose design recommendations that minimize the number of patients and recordings needed to achieve sufficient statistical power in longitudinal studies. We used a symmetric design with 144 recordings of TtP after a one-minute arterial occlusion in healthy volunteers. We did six occlusions each time in the capillaries of two fingers on each occasion, and repeated the procedure three times with an interval of at least one week between each investigation. All recordings were analyzed off-line using a cross-correlation technique with the Capiflow ® system. Each analysis was performed at least three times, giving a total of slightly less than 500 assessments. In our material (n= 10) TtP had a mean of 6.3 s (95% confidence interval 5.2 - 7.4). The correlation between repeated measurements in a single capillary during a single session was r>0.91 (CV 6%). The between-finger CV was 8% (r= 0.84). The CV of measurements between different days was about 20% when single measurements were compared. However, the CV decreased to less than 13% when the mean of at least two time-to-peak assessments on each occasion was used. In conclusion, the methodological error including day-to-day variation could be minimized using the mean of at least two repeated assessments of post-occlusive hyperemia at each time point in a longitudinal study. This finding should be taken into consideration in the design of future longitudinal studies.
Transient concentration of a gamma-tubulin-related protein with a pericentrin-related protein in the formation of basal bodies and flagella during the differentiation of Naegleria gruberi.

The distribution of two proteins in Naegleria gruberi, N-gammaTRP (Naegleria gamma-tubulin-related protein) and N-PRP (Naegleria pericentrin-related protein), was examined during the de novo formation of basal bodies and flagella that occurs during the differentiation of N. gruberi. After the initiation of differentiation, N-gammaTRP and N-PRP began to concentrate at the same site within cells. The percentage of cells with a concentrated region of N-gammaTRP and N-PRP was maximal (68%) at 40 min when the synthesis of tubulin had just started but no assembled microtubules were visible. When concentrated tubulin became visible (60 min), the region of concentrated N-gammaTRP and N-PRP was co-localized with the tubulin spot and then flagella began to elongate from the region of concentrated tubulin. When cells had elongated flagella, the concentrated N-gammaTRP and N-PRP were translocated to the opposite end of the flagellated cells and disappeared. The transient concentration of N-gammaTRP coincided with the transient formation of an F-actin spot at which N-gammaTRP and alpha-tubulin mRNA were co-localized. The concentration of N-gammaTRP and formation of the F-actin spot occurred without the formation of microtubules but were inhibited by cytochalasin D. These observations suggest that the regional concentration of N-gammaTRP and N-PRP is mediated by actin filaments and might provide a site of microtubule nucleation for the assembly of newly synthesized tubulins into basal bodies and flagella.
Measures of Narcissism and Their Relations to DSM-5 Pathological Traits

There exists substantial debate about how to best assess pathological narcissism with a variety of measures designed to assess grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, as well as the DSM-IV and DSM-5 based conceptualizations of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Wright and colleagues published correlations between several narcissism measures (Narcissistic Personality Inventory [NPI]; Pathological Narcissism Inventory [PNI]; Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire [PDQ] NPD) with the traits comprising the DSM-5 Section III personality trait model. In the current study, we examine the agreement manifested by Wright and colleagues’ narcissism–DSM-5 trait profiles with expert ratings of the DSM-5 traits most relevant to descriptions of DSM-IV NPD. Despite concerns regarding the NPI’s ability to measure pathological narcissism, its trait profile was strongly correlated with expert ratings, as was PDQ NPD’s profile. Conversely, the trait profiles associated with the PNI were primarily uncorrelated with the expert rated NPD profile. The implications of these findings with regard to the assessment of narcissism are discussed.
The Effect of Adult Children’s Working Hours on Visits to Elderly Parents: A Natural Experiment in Korea

Despite its significant policy implications, little is known about the impact working hours have on how often workers visit their elderly parents. Evidence is particularly lacking on men’s overtime work and workers in Asia. We examine the causal impact of male workers’ working times on parental visits, using a natural experiment to eliminate potential endogeneity bias. In 2004, the Korean government began reducing its legal workweek from 44 to 40 h, gradually expanding it from larger to smaller establishments by 2011. Using annual longitudinal data from the 2005 to 2014 Korea Labor and Income Panel Study (N = 7005 person-waves), we estimated an instrumental variable (IV) fixed-effects (FE) regression model. Our IV was an indicator variable of whether an individual full-time worker’s legal workweek was reduced to 40 h in a given year. The results showed that working one additional hour a week lowered the frequency of visits by 6.5% (95% confidence interval [− 13.0%, 0.0%]), which was not apparent in a FE model without the IV. Working long hours has implications for workers’ interactions with their elderly parents, and the failure to consider endogeneity in actual working hours may understate the negative effect. Reducing work hours may serve as an effective policy intervention for improving the well-being of older adults in rapidly aging Asian countries in a work-oriented and family-centered culture. We also highlight the need for further attention to men’s work hours, which are often considered much less important than women’s work status in population research on intergenerational support.
The politics of land deals : Cargill’s acquisition agendas in Indonesia and the Philippines

In the past decade, a global revaluation of land and agriculture has occurred. Following the convergence of the financial, food, and fuel crises in 2008, public and private sector actors sought control over agricultural land leading to a ‘global land rush’. The land rush is explored here with a focus on Cargill, a major agro-industrial commodity trader and intermediary actor in the global agricultural system – handling, processing, and financially speculating on much of the agricultural products consumed daily. Following (and perhaps forecasting) the land rush, Cargill has been pursuing a ‘global acquisition agenda’, involving an investment strategy focused on agricultural land, commodities, companies, and supply. This thesis analyses Cargill’s acquisition agenda and positions it within the transforming, and increasingly financialised, agricultural system. Two of Cargill’s investment projects are explored here, one involves oil palm plantations in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, and the other involves Cargill’s private equity investment into banana production in Mindanao, the Philippines. This thesis argues that Cargill’s central yet diversified position in the agricultural system inspires the motivations behind its acquisition agenda and shapes the strategies it implements to get deals made. Cargill uses country and region-specific informal power resources (including social networks and alliances) and formal power resources (including influence within and over state agencies and actors) to adjust to each country’s institutional and political economic context to establish land control. However, as this thesis finds, even after extensive negotiations and deal making, sometimes the largest of companies can fail.
Self-organized lightwave network based on waveguide films for three-dimensional optical wiring within boxes

This paper presents core technologies for a self-organized microoptical system (SELMOS) within optoelectronic computers; mass-productive fabrication processes of waveguide films and new types of self-organized lightwave networks (SOLNETs) for three-dimensional (3-D) optical wiring with optical Z-connections. Waveguide films are fabricated by the built-in mask method, which is reusable and can construct surface-normal mirrors/filters at one time within photolithographic accuracy. Beveled core edge walls are made by the tilted ultraviolet (UV) exposure through the built-in mask using a photodefinable material. Near- and far-field patterns reveal that the walls act as micromirrors for optical Z-connections. SOLNET is a network consisting of self-organized coupling waveguides between misaligned optical devices. The self-organization is generated in a photorefractive material by self-focusing of the two write beams from the two devices. Direct SOLNET, where wavelengths of the write beam and the signal beam are the same, is demonstrated using a laser diode. Reflective SOLNET, where one of the two write beams is replaced with a reflected write beam from the edge of the coupled device, realizes two-beam-writing SOLNET in a one-beam-writing configuration. It is especially effective when the coupled device cannot transmit write beams. The proof-of-concept is demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally. These results indicate a possibility to form 3-D optical wiring simply in SELMOS.
Dynamic Torque Analysis of a Wind Turbine Drive Train Including a Direct-Driven Permanent-Magnet Generator

Mechanical interactions between a wind turbine and a direct-driven permanent-magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) are studied, and a model to analyze the system behavior is suggested. The proposed model can be applied to analyze the mechanical vibrations of direct-driven wind turbine installations both in steady state and in dynamic cases. The cogging torque and torque ripple of the PMSG are used as excitation sources in the mechanical model. Four different permanent-magnet rotor constructions are analyzed. It is shown that the maximum allowable value of the cogging torque of the direct-driven permanent-magnet wind generator in this case is 1.5%-2% of the rated torque even when the corresponding resonance frequency does not occur in the operational speed range of the wind turbine. Furthermore, it was noticed that the resonance caused by the excitation torque should occur at the lowest possible speed.
Expression profiling of human macrophages and atherosclerotic plaques to identify genes and mechanisms that modulate the development of atherosclerosis

Macrophages play an important role in atherosclerosis, a disease that affects large and medium size arteries and causes clinical manifestations such as myocardial infarction or stroke. The aim of this thesis was to identify genes that are important in the development of atherosclerosis. Genes that have their major site of expression in macrophages or in atherosclerotic plaques, or are differently expressed in macrophages from subjects with atherosclerosis compared with macrophages from control subjects may affect atherogenesis. By comparing DNA microarray expression profiles of macrophages and atherosclerotic plaques with expression profiles from major tissues and cell types, macrophage and plaque specific genes were identified. The macrophage specific anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin 1 receptor antagonist (IL1RN) was down regulated by oxidized low-density lipoprotein (LDL), suggesting a novel pro-inflammatory role of oxidized LDL. Immunohistochemistry showed that the plaque specific gene chemokine CC motif ligand 18 (CCL18) co-localized with macrophages in the plaques. In addition, macrophages from subjects with atherosclerosis had more than two-fold higher gene expression of CCL18 than macrophages from subjects without atherosclerosis. CCL18 is chemotactic for leukocytes and may therefore contribute to plaque inflammation. A promoter region polymorphism of the CCL18 gene was associated with increased macrophage CCL18 gene expression, but not with an increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Comparison of macrophage expression profiles from subjects with atherosclerosis and control subjects identified 27 genes with an altered expression. Among these genes, CD44 and insulin receptor substrate 2 (IRS2) were both expressed at higher levels in macrophages from subjects with atherosclerosis compared with macrophages from control subjects. Immunohistochemistry showed that IRS2, an intracellular signaling molecule important in metabolism, was expressed in macrophages and endothelial cells in human carotid plaques. The C allele of the -765C→T SNP in the promoter region of the IRS2 gene was associated with increased macrophage expression of IRS2, and subjects homozygous for the C allele had 40% increased risk of coronary heart disease. The receptor CD44 mediates adhesion of monocytes to the vascular wall, a crucial step in atherosclerosis. CD44 expression correlated with secretion of interleukin 6 (IL-6) in macrophages, and IL-6 augmented CD44 expression in macrophages. In addition, CD44 deficient mice had lower circulating IL-6 than wild type mice. This suggests a positive feed-back loop between IL-6 and CD44, and that CD44 may affect atherosclerosis progression by modulating the inflammatory response. In conclusion, IRS2 might be a new susceptibility gene for atherosclerosis and CHD. CCL18, IL1RN and CD44 may play important roles in the development of atherosclerosis.