Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Estimating Poverty in the Absence of Consumption Data: The Case of Liberia

In much of the developing world, the demand for high frequency quality household data for poverty monitoring and program design far outstrips the capacity of the statistics bureau to provide such data. In these environments, all available data sources must be leveraged. Most surveys, however, do not collect the detailed consumption data necessary to construct aggregates and poverty lines to measure poverty directly. This paper benefits from a shared listing exercise for two large-scale national household surveys conducted in Liberia in 2007 to explore alternative methodologies to estimate poverty indirectly. The first is an asset-based model that is commonly used in Demographic and Health Surveys. The second is a survey-to-survey imputation that makes use of small area estimation techniques. In addition to a standard base model, separate models are estimated for urban and rural areas and an expanded model that includes climatic variables. Special attention is paid to the inclusion of cell phones, with implications for other assets whose cost and availability may be changing rapidly. The results demonstrate substantial limitations with asset-based indexes, but also leave questions as to the accuracy and stability of imputation models.
Proteasome inhibitors suppress formation of polyglutamine‐induced nuclear inclusions in cultured postmitotic neurons

At least nine neurodegenerative disorders are caused by expansion of polyglutamine repeats in various genes. This expansion induces the formation of nuclear inclusions (NI) within various cell types. In this study, we developed a model for polyglutamine diseases using primary cultures of sympathetic neurons from the superior cervical ganglia of prenatal rat pups. Transfection with a plasmid encoding 127 glutamine repeats causes NI to develop in ∼70% of the sympathetic neurons within 6 days. In addition, it causes somatic atrophy and inhibits dendritic growth. The NIs contain ubiquitinated proteins and sequester the molecular chaperone heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70). We found that two specific proteasome inhibitors, lactacystin and CEP1612, suppress thezformation of polyglutamine‐induced NI. In addition, lactacystin treatment induced the removal of preexisting NI. Western blotting and immunocytochemistry revealed that lactacystin and CEP1612 strongly induce the expression of Hsp70, whereas less specific proteasome inhibitor such as N‐acetyl‐Leu‐Leu‐Norleucinal does not. Coexpression of 127 glutamines with a plasmid encoding wild‐type Hsp70 gene resulted in a marked reduction of the percentage of neurons containing NI. In addition, transfection with plasmids encoding mutant Hsp70 blocked the effects of lactacystin. These findings further implicate Hsp70 as a neuroprotective molecule and they suggest the potential utility of certain proteasome inhibitors in the treatment of polyglutamine diseases.
Evaluating the Characteristics of Corporate Boards Associated with Layoff Decisions

The paper evaluates the characteristics of corporate boards associated with layoff decisions using a large sample of UK firms suffering performance declines over the period 1994-2003. The results show that firms are less likely to respond to performance declines with employee layoffs when they have large boards. Further analysis shows that layoff decisions are positively associated with the proportion of outside directors and directors' remuneration. The findings provide some support to the recommendations of the Cadbury Report (1992) and Higgs Review (2003) on the importance of the structure and composition of board of directors in the corporate governance process. Copyright (c) 2006 The Author; Journal compilation (c) 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Fetal kidney volume and urine production in cases of fetal growth retardation

The amount of amniotic fluid has a close correlation to the function of the fetal renal system. In many cases of fetal growth retardation oligohydramnios is obvious. The aim of this study is the investigation of the hourly fetal urine production rate (HFUPR) and the growth of fetal kidneys during pregnancy in cases of fetal growth retardation and to evaluate the renal participation in the origin of oligohydramnios in cases of growth retardation. In 52 healthy pregnancies and 27 cases with known fetal growth retardation, the volume of the fetal kidneys was measured sonographically and the hourly rate of fetal urine production was determined. Two third of the patients with fetal growth retardation had obvious oligohydramnios. In cases of fetal growth retardation the volume of the fetal kidneys was significantly smaller when compared to the control group, and the volume of fetal urine production was significantly lower. The reduced perfusion of the fetal kidneys in those cases with fetal growth retardation may be the reason for the reduction of the HFUPR. Due to the fact that HFUPR is a dynamical parameter and in close relationship to the perfusion of the fetal kidneys, the identification and measurement of this parameter may help to detect subacute and imminent fetal distress in cases of sonographically proven fetal growth retardation.
Brain Structure in Neuropsychologically Defined Subgroups of Schizophrenia and Psychotic Bipolar Disorder.

BACKGROUND Neuropsychological impairment is heterogeneous in psychosis. The association of intracranial volume (ICV) and total brain volume (TBV) with cognition suggests brain structure abnormalities in psychosis will covary with the severity of cognitive impairment. We tested the following hypotheses: (1) brain structure abnormalities will be more extensive in neuropsychologically impaired psychosis patients; (2) psychosis patients with premorbid cognitive limitations will show evidence of hypoplasia (ie, smaller ICV); and (3) psychosis patients with evidence of cognitive decline will demonstrate atrophy (ie, smaller TBV, but normal ICV). METHODS One hundred thirty-one individuals with psychosis and 97 healthy subjects underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological testing. Patients were divided into neuropsychologically normal and impaired groups. Impaired patients were further subdivided into deteriorated and compromised groups if estimated premorbid intellect was average or below average, respectively. ICV and TBV were compared across groups. Localized brain volumes were qualitatively examined using voxel-based morphometry. RESULTS Compared to healthy subjects, neuropsychologically impaired patients exhibited smaller TBV, reduced grey matter volume in frontal, temporal, and subcortical brain regions, and widespread white matter volume loss. Neuropsychologically compromised patients had smaller ICV relative to healthy subjects, and neuropsychologically normal and deteriorated patient groups, but relatively normal TBV. Deteriorated patients exhibited smaller TBV compared to healthy subjects, but relatively normal ICV. Unexpectedly, TBV, adjusted for ICV, was reduced in neuropsychologically normal patients. CONCLUSIONS Patients with long-standing cognitive limitations exhibit evidence of early cerebral hypoplasia, whereas neuropsychologically normal and deteriorated patients show evidence of brain tissue loss consistent with progression or later cerebral dysmaturation.
Welfare States and Welfare State Theory

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Requirements for the dGTP-dependent Repeat Addition Processivity of Recombinant TetrahymenaTelomerase*

Telomerase is a reverse transcriptase responsible for adding simple sequence repeats to chromosome 3′-ends. The template for telomeric repeat synthesis is carried within the RNA component of the telomerase ribonucleoprotein complex. Telomerases can copy their internal templates with repeat addition processivity, reusing the same template multiple times in the extension of a single primer. For some telomerases, optimal repeat addition processivity requires high micromolar dGTP concentrations, a much higher dGTP concentration than required for processive nucleotide addition within a repeat. We have investigated the requirements for dGTP-dependent repeat addition processivity using recombinant Tetrahymenatelomerase. By altering the template sequence, we show that repeat addition processivity retains the same dGTP-dependence even if dGTP is not the first nucleotide incorporated in the second repeat. Furthermore, no dNTP other than dGTP can stimulate repeat addition processivity, even if it is the first nucleotide incorporated in the second repeat. Using structural variants of dGTP, we demonstrate that the stimulation of repeat addition processivity is specific for dGTP base and sugar constituents but requires only a single phosphate group. However, all nucleotides that stimulate repeat addition processivity also inhibit or compete with dGTP incorporation into product DNA. By assaying telomerase complexes reconstituted with a variety of altered templates, we find that repeat addition processivity has an unanticipated template or product sequence specificity. Finally, we show that a novel, nascent product DNA binding site establishes dGTP-dependent repeat addition processivity.
International Asset Pricing and the Benefits from World Market Diversification

This paper extends previous tests of the conditional CAPM using different asymmetric and non-diagonal multivariate GARCH-M specifications for eight large national markets and the world market simultaneously. To solve the well-known problems associated with the likelihood functions of multivariate GARCH models, maximization is performed using simulated annealing, a Markov Chain Monte Carlo stochastic optimization method. We find that a model with double asymmetric effects and a time-varying price of world covariance risk supports all tested asset-pricing restrictions and that the previously often employed symmetric diagonal specification is overwhelmingly rejected. The evidence suggests that investors from all countries could expect statistically significant benefits from international diversification but that gains are considerable larger for investors with smaller home markets than for US and Japanese investors.
Specialization patterns in trade and technology.

This thesis focuses on the hypothesis of increasing returns and path-dependence in technological development, which originates in the supposedly localised nature of external economies from knowledge creation, and looks at its implications in the innovation literature and in recent models of endogenous technological change, specialization and growth. Chapter 1 provides an empirical assessment of the hypothesis of increasing returns and path-dependence. A recontracting process formalises the idea that in the presence of strong national externaIities a country's pattern of technological specialization tends to polarise towards extreme values thus leading to the emergence of a bimodal distribution. This prediction is found to be at variance with the data. However, reinforcing effects appear to be at work in situations of strong disadvantage. This might be the effect of scarce past research experience limiting countries' ability to absorb external knowledge. The analysis of Chapter 1 is further developed in Chapter 2, where differences across technological fields are accounted for, to allow for the possibility that only some of them may be subject to increasing returns. Chapter 3 compares technology and trade specialization patterns for a group of advanced countries. The analysis shows that their relationship is weak: this weakens the case for self-reinforcing mechanisms in technological change leading to persistence in trade patterns. Chapter 4 finds that the elasticity of innovation to international spillovers is positive and significant, thus suggesting they may be an important force leading to mobility in technology and trade specialization patterns. Absorptive capacity positively affects the elasticity to spillovers, but its effect depends on the position of the country with respect to the world technological frontier: the larger the gap of a country with the technological leaders, the lower is its ability to absorb and exploit external knowledge, but the larger is its potential to increase this ability.
Real-Time Automatic Framework for IRC Threat Information Detection

Traditional research in the cyber security domain mainly focus on enhancing security of computers, information systems, and network infrastructures [1]; however, studies are still ineffective against protecting the systems and combatting against attacks. Instead of adopting reactive methods to protect cyberspace against cyberattacks, understanding the motivation, mind, and approach of the attackers will allow the security experts the ability to defend their cyberspace in a proactive manner. Such a model and behavior analysis can be obtained by monitoring and analysis of social media and Internet communication channels. Among them Internet-Relay-Chat (IRC) has been actively used by the security groups (both malicious and non-malicious) to share their knowledge and get help because IRC provides real-time responses. Analysis of IRC hacker channel data aid security experts to reveal the potential cyberspace risk, hacker behavior and networking, thus contributing to proactive response for hacker attack.
Impact of the Share Structure Reform on the Role of Operating Related Party Transactions in China

Prior literature suggests that related party transactions may have a potentially detrimental effect on firm valuation because it undermines the corporate governance benefits a firm offers to minority shareholders. The share structure reform provides a unique opportunity to study to what extent the negative valuation effect of related party transactions interacts with corporate governance. Our empirical analysis confirms that related party transactions are detrimental to firm valuation. More importantly, we show that the negative effect of operating related party transactions on firm valuation declined after the share structure reform, partly due to the fact that the quality of corporate governance improved after the reform.
Adaptive admission control for web applications with variable capacity

The system capacity available to a multi-tier Web based application is often a dynamic quantity. Most static threshold-based overload control mechanisms are best suited to situations where the system's capacity is constant or the bottleneck resource is known. However, with varying capacity, the admission control mechanism needs to adapt dynamically. We propose and implement an adaptive admission control mechanism that adjusts the admitted load to compensate for changes in system capacity. The proposed solution is implemented as a proxy server between clients and front-end Web servers. The proxy monitors ‘black-box’ performance metrics-response time and rate of successfully completed requests (goodput). With these measurements as indicators of system state, we employ a control theory based feedback loop to dynamically determine the rate of admitted requests. The objective is to balance changes in response time and changes in goodput, while preventing overloads due to reduction in available system capacity. We evaluate our mechanism with experiments on a test-bed and find that it is able to maintain higher productivity than a static admission control scheme.
Genetic Diversity Analysis among Onion Genotypes through RAPD, SSR and ISSR Markers

Onion (Allium cepa L.) (2n =16) is one of the important bulb producing vegetable crops. The knowledge of genetic diversity in a crop species is fundamental to its improvement. However, morphological traits have many limitations, including low polymorphism, low heritability, late expression, and may be controlled by epistatic and pleiotropic gene effects (Cramer and Havey, 1999). Now a day’s very powerful PCR-based techniques have also emerged which are very fast, reliable and require minimal amount of tissue for investigation. The use of molecular markers for the evaluation of genetic diversity is receiving much attention than morphological characterization. The various marker tools are Randomly Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD), Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR), Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) and Sequence Related Amplified Polymorphism (SRAP). They have large number of applications like characterization of gene pool, DNA fingerprinting, phylogenetic analysis, molecular dissection of complex traits, and characterization of genome organization. These DNA markers offer several advantages over traditional phenotypic markers, as they provide data that can be analysed objectively. The knowledge acquired through this investigation may play a pivotal role in the application of molecular markers in onion improvement programs.
The Age Pattern of Human Capital and Regional Productivity

We explore the impact of the age structure of human capital on average regional productivity by applying a spatial econometric analysis based on an augmented Lucas-type production function. We also apply a new definition of regional human capital focusing on its availability. The estimates provide evidence that there are age specific human capital effects in Germany and that a temporary increase in regional productivity could occur during the demographic transition. Furthermore, it becomes clear that the availability based definition of human capital provides additional insight and so, could enrich future studies on regional human capital.
A survey of activity-based costing in the U.K.'s largest companies

Abstract This paper contains the results of a 1994 survey of activity-based costing (ABC) in the U.K.'s largest 1000 companies. The survey was designed to ascertain the adoption rate of ABC in these companies, the specific application of ABC, the views of users on the success and importance of ABC, the views of non-ABC users on ABC and the possibilities for future research. The results indicate that although ABC is now used by a significant number of large companies its impact is often restricted in scope and it has also been rejected by a sizeable number. The majority of companies have still to come to a decision on its use. Among users it is applied throughout all of the core areas of management accounting. There is thus potential for considerable growth in its adoption among non-users. It is an on-going development which gives considerable opportunity for researches interested in change to pursue work on this topic in a variety of the sub-areas of management accounting.
Determinants of Child Labor in the Export and Non-Export Sectors of Bangladesh

Trade sanctions imposed by industrialized countries on products made by children in developing countries are motivated by the assumptions that children work in export industries and that such work harms them. We use binary logistic regression techniques to analyze the determinants of children's work in the export and non-export sectors of Bangladesh. Looking at all children, we find that the factors determining whether a child works in the export sector are being older, being a girl, living in an urban area, and having a less educated father.
Audit Firms' Client Acceptance Decisions: Does Partner-Level Industry Expertise Matter?

SUMMARY: This study examines whether auditor industry expertise affects firms' client acceptance decisions. Analyzing listed firms in Taiwan, where audit partners' signatures are disclosed on the audit report, we find that partner-level industry specialists, rather than firm-level industry specialists, are less likely to accept clients with higher audit risk. We also provide weak evidence that partner-level industry specialists are less likely to accept clients with higher financial risk. This is consistent with the notion that partner-level industry specialists have an incentive to protect their reputation when making client acceptance decisions. In 2002, following the spirit of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Securities and Futures Commission in Taiwan adopted a series of new rules to improve audit quality. We examine the effect of SOX on client acceptance decisions and the results indicate that partner-level industry specialists manage risk by accepting clients with less audit risk since litigation .
Air Transport, Climate Change and Tourism

Air transport plays an ever more important role in tourism. However, air transport already has a 40% share of all tourism CO2 emissions and 54–75% of radiative forcing (UNWTO, UNEP, WMO, 2008, figures for 2005). Furthermore, the EU Commission wishes to play its part in ensuring global temperatures do not rise by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels by reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60–80% by 2050 from 1990 levels. Although the EU accepts that emissions from the aviation industry are important, it remains ambiguous as to whether or not its emission-reduction target includes this ever-growing sector. Furthermore, by using percentage reduction targets, the EU neglects the crucial importance of both cumulative emissions and carbon-cycle feedbacks. This paper aims to address both the target's deficiencies and the likely contribution that technology can make to improving aviation fuel efficiency by quantifying the contribution of the aviation industry to future EU climate change targets in relation to CO2 alone. This paper demonstrates that, despite a variety of technological options available to improve fuel efficiency within the aviation industry, current high rates of growth are locking aviation into becoming a very significant contributor to the EU's climate change emissions within the next few decades. Furthermore, the consequences of these findings for the future of tourism are discussed.
Garment image retrieval based on multi-features

In order to meet the requirements of users, a content-based image retrieval algorithm for electronic commerce has been investigated combining color features with shape features. The algorithm of image retrieval using both the invariant moment and the Fourier descriptor is proposed to retrieve the shape features of image. The secondary retrieval has been done in succession by use of modified color histogram. To avoid the influence of background, a method of image background elimination is proposed prior to the image retrieval using multi-features. Experimental results show that the algorithm is accuracy. The methods of garment image retrieval based on multi-features are promising to be useful for applications of online shopping.