Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Into the heterogeneities in the Portuguese labour market: an empirical assessment

This paper provides a comprehensive study of the heterogeneity in the Portuguese labour market. We use Labour Force Survey microdata covering a complete business cycle, from 1998:1 to 2018:1, to evaluate the labour market attachment of several labour states and assess the most suitable allocation of individuals across statuses. We also evaluate the adequacy of the conventional unemployment criteria. Following the relevant strand of literature on this topic, we apply an evidence-based categorisation of labour market status by exploiting the information on the results of the behaviour of non-employed. To that end, we use multinomial and binary logit models of the determinants of transitions of workers across labour market states to test for the equivalence between non-employed groups. We conclude that heterogeneity is an evident feature of the Portuguese labour market, both between and within the conventional non-employment states. In particular, we find that the status comprising those inactive workers which want work constitutes a distinct state in the labour market and displays a transition behaviour closer to unemployment than to the group of inactive workers which do not want work. Moreover, the classification as inactive workers of individuals which report "waiting" as a reason for not having searched for a job, those individuals who have searched for a job but are still considered to be out-of-the-labour-force, as well as those individuals which are due to start work in more than three months might not be reasonable, since they show considerable attachment to the labour market and we reject the pooling of such states with their counterparts.
Minimum wages and the health of immigrants’ children

ABSTRACT States are increasingly resorting to raising the minimum wage to boost the earnings of those at the bottom of the income distribution. In this article, we examine the effects of minimum wage increases on the health of immigrants’ children. Their parents are disproportionately represented in minimum wage jobs and are a growing part of the US labour force. Using a difference-in-differences identification strategy and data from the National Health Interview Survey from 2000 to 2015, we examine whether children of low-educated immigrants experience any changes in their health when the minimum wage increases. We find no evidence that this is the case despite a number of robustness checks.
Detecting Creative Accounting in Businesses in Financial Distress

This paper investigates whether the management of firms in financial distress applies creative accounting techniques in order to fine-tune the elements of their financial statements. For this purpose, the financial statements of 385 Greek bankrupt firms of the trade and manufacturing sectors for the period 2003 to 2014 were analyzed. The sample was divided into two sub periods; in the period before the financial crisis, that is from 2003 to 2008, and the period 2009 to 2014 during which the Greek economy was in crisis and recession. By applying factor analysis, five financial ratios were selected, which formed the independent variables in a Discriminant Analysis (MDA) and Logit models in order to find those firms which, while they were bankrupt they were classified in the last period of their operation as healthy (type I error). By selecting these firms (common to both models), their accounting data for the last two years before they went bankrupt have been investigated in order to determine whether they have been affected by the application of creative accounting methods. The results showed that the management of some of the selected firms applied creative accounting techniques during the last year of operation before their bankruptcy, which led to the manipulation and falsification of the published financial statements during the period before the financial crisis. However, this is not the case for the period 2009 to 2014, because the economic crisis affects the behavior of managers in applying creative accounting, which is owing to the changes in market rules.
Versioning Goods and Joint Purchases with Network Externality

This paper analyses the monopolist’s production and pricing decisions on two vertically differentiated versions of a product in the presence of network externality. We show that offering only the higher-quality version of the product is the optimal strategy when negative externality exists and the utility from joint purchase is not large. If both versions are provided, the monopolist will charge a monopoly price for each version to induce separate purchases if these two versions are too close substitutes. Moreover, in the equilibrium with joint purchases, with an increase in externality or the utility from a joint purchase, the prices of both versions increase. In addition, with an increase in network externality, the equilibrium region for separate purchases first increases and then decreases.
Understanding the Energy-Water Nexus

Energie, water en voedsel zijn nauw gerelateerde natuurlijke hulpbronnen. Energie is nodig om voedsel te produceren en water te zuiveren en transporteren; water is nodig om gewassen te telen en is essentieel voor de meeste vormen van energieproductie; gewassen zijn nodig voor het voeden van een groeiende wereldbevolking die zowel energie als water consumeert. De beschikbaarheid van land speelt een essentiele rol bij het benutten van elk van deze drie hulpbronnen, bijvoorbeeld bij de productie van gewassen voor voedsel- of energiedoeleinden. Het complexe systeem van relaties tussen deze hulpbronnen wordt aangeduid met de term “Energie-Water-Voedsel Nexus”. Dit rapport presenteert een literatuurstudie met betrekking tot onze huidige kennis over de “Energie-Water-Voedsel Nexus”. Omdat de “Nexus” een nog relatief nieuw, beperkt begrepen, en onduidelijk gedefinieerd begrip vormt, analyseert dit rapport in het bijzonder een belangrijk onderdeel van de “Nexus”: de interrelaties tussen energietechnologie en watergebruik. De auteurs tonen met een scenario-studie aan dat energie- en waterbeleid zou moeten worden geintegreerd. Zij hopen dat dit document waardevol is voor lokale en regionale beleidsmakers die verantwoordelijk zijn voor het ontwerpen en implementeren van gecombineerde strategieen voor energie- en watersystemen.
Screening of Rice Apoplast Associated Endophytic Bacterial Isolates for Moisture Stress Tolerance and Plant Growth Promoting Traits

Investigations were made to identify, screen and characterize rice apoplastic fluid endophytic bacterial strains for osmotic stress tolerance and plant growth promoting activity. These bacterial strains were identified phylogentically as Bacillus subtilis TSAC5, Bacillus subtilis TSAA2, Bacillus sp. R2AA10, Bacillus cereus R2AA7, Bacillus marisflavi TSAC7, Cupriavidus alkaliphilus TSAC1, Delftia sp. TSAC2, Janibacter melonis R2AA1, Microbacterium oleivorans R2AA6, Kocuria rosea R2AA5, Pseudomonas aeruginosa NAAI3 and Sphingobium yanoikuyae R2AI1. Of these 12 strains, eight were obtained from drought tolerant rice varieties such as Anna R4 and IR DRT 64 and four from normal rice variety CO51. These endophytes exhibited varied level of osmotic stress tolerance created using different concentrations of PEG 6000 (-1.5, -3.0, -4.0, -4.5, -5.0 and -5.5 MPa) under in vitro conditions in liquid and solid medium. Among the 12 strains, Cupriavidus alkaliphilus TSAC1, Delftia sp. TSAC2, Bacillus marisflavi TSAC7, Janibacter melonis R2AA1, Kocuria rosea R2AA5, Pseudomonas aeruginosa NAAI3 and Sphingobium yanoikuyae R2AI1 showed moisture stress tolerance up to -5.5 MPa. Further increase in moisture stress of -6.0 MPa inhibited growth of 12 tested strains. These strains also exhibited Indole acetic acid (IAA), gibberellic acid (GA3) and extracellular polysaccharide (EPS) production and also showed ACC deaminase (ACCD) activity. Maximum extracellular proline production was found in Bacillus marisflavi TSAC7 under both normal and water stressed conditions. Higher IAA productivity was registered in Janibacter melonis R2AA1 followed by Cupriavidus alkaliphilus TSAC1 and Sphingobium yanoikuyae R2AI1 in the absence of PEG 6000. In the presence of PEG 6000 Delftia sp. TSAC2 recorded maximum IAA productivity. Bacillus subtilis TSAA2 showed greater ACC deaminase activity. EPS production was in the order of Pseudomonas aeruginosa NAAI3 followed by Sphingobium yanoikuyae R2AI1. Sphingobium yanoikuyae R2AI1 produced maximum quantity of GA3 both under normal and water stressed condition. None of the tested strains indicated insoluble phosphate, silicate and zinc solubilisation.
Distributed Event-Triggered Gradient Method for Constrained Convex Minimization

The event-triggered scheduling of network transmissions has found many applications in engineering tasks operated in cyber-physical systems for its competitive advantage of system resource exploitation. This paper investigates the distributed gradient method for large-scale convex constrained problems with event-triggered consensus protocols. We show that the convergence can be ensured provided that the event-triggering threshold bound is square summable, and the stepsize satisfies specific conditions that are characterized by the Lipschitz constant of the gradient and the spectrum of the mixing matrix associated with the network topology. Stronger convergence results are derived for the strongly convex case, i.e., the local estimate of the minimizer linearly converges to the minimizer until reaching an error floor whose magnitude is shown to be proportional to the stepsize if the triggering threshold bound linearly converges. Comprehensive numerical experiments are conducted to verify the correctness of the theoretical results and advantages of the proposed algorithm over existing ones.
Single-Photon Synchronous Detection

Phase and intensity of light are detected simultaneously using a fully digital imaging technique: single-photon synchronous detection. This approach has been theoretically and experimentally investigated in this paper. We designed a fully integrated camera implementing the new technique that was fabricated in a 0.35 mum CMOS technology. The camera demonstrator features a modulated light source, so as to independently capture the time-of-flight of the photons reflected by a target, thereby reconstructing a depth map of the scene. The camera also enables image enhancement of 2D scenes when used in passive mode, where differential maps of the reflection patterns are the basis for advanced image processing algorithms. Extensive testing has shown the suitability of the technique and confirmed phase accuracy predictions. Experimental results showed that the proposed rangefinder method is effective. Distance measurement performance was characterized with a maximum nonlinearity error lower than 12 cm within a range of a few meters. In the same range, the maximum repeatability error was 3.8 cm.
The Innovative Group Learning Design: Instructional Group Activities.

The Instructional Group Activities Design (IGAD) refers to activities which aim to improve professional development and learning skills, in which a learning-centered teaching process is adopted and students study in small groups. The study aimed to both introduce the IGAD and determine pre-service science teachers’ opinions on IGAs that were performed during the practice hours of the course “Special Teaching Methods I. ” In line with this aim, opinions of 56 pre-service science teachers on the practices were received. An opinion form, which includes open and close-ended questions, was used as a data collection tool. According to the results of the study, pre-service science teachers stated that the practice mostly contributed to their professional and social development areas. Regarding the negative aspects of the practices, pre-service science teachers underlined that they had difficulty regarding time and experienced certain group problems. Based on these findings, positive and negative aspects of the instructional group activities design for teacher training were discussed, and some recommendations were presented.
Current concepts in the biopsy of musculoskeletal tumors.

BACKGROUND A musculoskeletal tumor biopsy can involve fine needle aspiration, core needle biopsy, or incisional biopsy. Controversy regarding the diagnostic yield of these biopsy techniques continues. The purpose of this article is to summarize the current concepts in the biopsy of musculoskeletal tumors. METHODS We performed a literature review of clinical articles reporting on the biopsy of bone and soft-tissue primary tumors. Clinical articles were excluded on the basis on abstract content if they represented case reports, review or opinion articles, or technique descriptions. Eighteen of the thirty-nine articles that remained were excluded because the results did not indicate the diagnostic accuracy of the various biopsy techniques. Thus, twenty-one articles with diagnostic data on the biopsy of bone and soft-tissue tumors were included in this review. RESULTS Core needle biopsy appeared to be more accurate than fine needle aspiration, and incisional biopsy appeared to be more accurate than both of these techniques, but the differences did not reach significance. Incisional biopsy was more expensive than the percutaneous biopsy methods. In deep musculoskeletal tumors, incorporation of ultrasonography or computed tomography for guidance is easy and safe and can be useful for increasing the accuracy of the biopsy. Advantages of a percutaneous technique compared with an incisional one are the low risk of contamination and the minimally invasive nature. Certain anatomic locations and histologic types were associated with diagnostic difficulty. Vertebral tumors had the lowest diagnostic accuracy regardless of the biopsy technique. Myxoid, infection, and round cell histologies were associated with the lowest diagnostic accuracy. CONCLUSIONS The current literature has not clarified the optimal biopsy technique for the diagnosis of bone and soft-tissue tumors. However, core needle biopsy is usually preferable to incisional biopsy because of the low risk of contamination and the low cost. In addition, the use of imaging guidance increases the diagnostic accuracy of musculoskeletal biopsies and reduces the risk of complications. If the result of a percutaneous biopsy is nondiagnostic, a small incisional biopsy should be performed.
Overexpression and mutation of ZNF384 is associated with favorable prognosis in breast cancer patients

Background To search for genes with high sensitivity and to explore its application value related to clinical prognostic prediction, so as to provide important foundation for the preventive intervention, early diagnosis, treatment and prognosis evaluation for breast cancer. Methods Tissue samples from ten clinical breast cancer patients were collected to search for the common mutant genes among various samples, and to explore the enrichment degree of mutant genes at both disease and signaling pathway levels using the whole exome sequencing (WES). Subsequently, targets genes with changes in expression levels that showed high correlations with mutation were screened from the above common genes using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. On this basis, differences in the mutation and expression levels of the screened target genes between breast cancer tissues and para-carcinoma tissues, as well as their correlations with patient survival were analyzed using the gene expression and mutation data in TCGA database, together with the clinical information. Finally, the potential regulatory pathways and potential downstream targets of the target genes were predicted through gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) using Multi-Experiment Matrix (MEM) software. Results A total of 23 common mutant genes were discovered from the tissue samples from ten breast cancer patients, which were mostly enriched in the cancer, PI3K/Akt and cAMP signaling pathways. Among these 23 genes, only the changes in the expression levels of ZNF384 and PDE4DIP had displayed over 15% consistency with mutation. Besides, it was discovered through TCGA database analysis that, the expression level of ZNF384 gene in breast cancer tissues with ZNF384 mutation was far higher than that in those with no ZNF384 mutation. Moreover, such gene mutation and high expression had shown significantly positive correlation with the patient survival (P<0.05). In addition, GSEA indicated that, tissues with high ZNF384 expression were associated with enrichments related to cell cycle signaling pathway and mitosis metaphase pathway, while this series of effects might be correlated with its regulation on the level and activity of its downstream gene CXCL14. Conclusions ZNF384 mutation and up-regulated ZNF384 expression level in breast cancer tissues is significantly positively correlated with patient survival. Therefore, ZNF384 can serve as a molecular marker for the diagnosis and prognostic prediction of breast cancer as well as a potential therapeutic target.
Тheoretical and applied provisions of the research of the state budget deficit in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe

Within the article, a comprehensive study of the state budget deficit in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries is presented, the effectiveness of managing it is determined. Considerable attention is paid to the deepening of methodical aspects of the assessment of trends in the formation of revenues and expenditures of the identified budgets, the algorithm for defining the deficit of the budget is detailed and it is tested in practice. The obtained results provide an opportunity to establish that the size of the state's deficit depends in part on the economic development of the state and at the same time, its existence can have a positive effect on the growth rate of the national economy. In order to establish the peculiarities of such interaction, a comparative analysis between the deficit ratio of the state budgets and the level of GDP in the CEE countries is carried out. The study confirmed the thesis on the correlation between these indicators and it was also possible to determine in the long run (2007-2017) how these parameters changed. It is established that the accelerated pace of GDP growth with simultaneous growth of the state budget deficit is an indicator of its effective management, as economic growth allows for new, unplanned revenues and other incomings that will reduce the size of the gap between revenues and expenditures of such a budget. In turn, in case of rapid growth of the deficit against the backdrop of insignificant growth rates of the country's GDP, it shows that some of the country's financial resources are spent inefficiently and are not used to stimulate economic development in the state. In this case, the funds are spent on the social sphere maintenance, raising the level of economic provision of citizens of the state. However, such processes can take place only in the short term, since the deficit itself will need to be further covered by other revenue items of the budget. Taking into consideration the outlined, it is stated in the article, that improper management of the state budget deficit may have long-term negative consequences for the functioning of the entire national economy, and their solution cannot be implemented quickly.
Exploring the Capacity of Bacteria for Natural Product Biosynthesis

Sch47554 and Sch47555 are antifungal compounds from Streptomyces sp. SCC2136. The availability of the biosynthetic gene cluster made it possible to track down the genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes responsible for the structural features of these two angucyclines. Sugar moieties play important roles in the biological activities of many natural products. Investigation of glycosyltransferases (GTs) may potentially help diversify pharmaceutically significant drugs through combinatorial biosynthesis. Sequence analysis indicated that SchS7 is a putative C-GT, while SchS9 and SchS10 were proposed to be O-GTs. In this study, we characterized the roles of these three GTs in the biosynthesis of Sch47554 and Sch47555. Co-expression of the aglycone and sugar biosynthetic genes with schS7 in Streptomyces lividans K4 resulted in the production of C-glycosylated rabelomycin, which revealed that SchS7 attaches a D-amicetose moiety to the aglycone core structure at the C-9 position. Gene inactivation studies revealed that subsequent glycosylation steps take place in a sequential manner in which SchS9 first attaches either a L-aculose or L-amicetose moiety to the 4'-OH of the C-glycosylated aglycone, then SchS10 transfers a L-aculose moiety to the 3-OH of the angucycline core. * This chapter has been published as Fidan. F. ,# Yan, R. ,# Gladstone, G. , Zhou, T. , Zhu, D. , Zhan, J.*: New insights into the glycosylation steps in the biosynthesis of Sch47554 and Sch47555. ChemBioChem, 19, 1424-1432 (2018). (# : equal contribution)
Multi-Mode Operation of Combined-Cycle Gas Turbines With Increasing Wind Penetration

As power systems evolve to incorporate greater penetrations of variable renewables, the demand for flexibility within the system is increased. Combined-cycle gas turbines are traditionally considered as relatively inflexible units, but those which incorporate a steam bypass stack are capable of open-cycle operation. Facilitating these units to also operate in open-cycle mode can benefit the power system via improved system reliability, while reducing the production needed from dedicated peaking units. The utilization of the multi-mode functionality is shown to be dependent on the flexibility inherent in the system and the manner in which the system is operated.
NATURAL RADIOACTIVITY MEASUREMENTS IN LOCAL AND IMPORTED COMMERCIAL GRANITES USED AS ORNAMENTAL STONES

U, Th, Ra, and K radioactivities were determined in commercial granite samples collected from local market using a NaI (Tl) gamma-ray spectroscopy system. 238 U, Th, 226 Ra, and 40 K activity concentrations of the studied commercial granites range between 31 and 351.33 BqKg, 22.2 to 102.35 BqKg, 22.2 to168.35 BqKg and 881.49 to 1460.67 BqKg, respectively. The highest values of activity concentrations of U, Ra and K were recorded in Lahm Mafroum commercial granites. High radioactivity of Lahm Mafroum is attributed to the presence of meta-autonite, zircon, allanite, monazite, sphene and apatite. Absorbed Dose Rate (D), annual effective dose equivalent (AEDE), radium equivalent activity (Raeq), external (Hex) and internal (Hin) hazard index, in addition to activity gamma index (Iγ) caused by gamma emitting natural radionuclide are determined from the obtained values of Ra, Th and K. Fairly, many of the studied commercial granites do not satisfy the universal standards.
La enseñanza virtual en la universidad. El caso del Campus Virtual UNLa (Argentina)

El proposito de este articulo es compartir la experiencia de trabajo interdisciplinario del equipo del Campus Virtual UNla en los procesos de virtualizacion de los diferentes espacios curriculares de la Universidad Nacional de Lanus (Argentina) y dar cuenta de la transformacion en la forma de abordaje de la tarea. Palabras clave: campus virtual; virtualizacion; equipo multidisciplinario; innovacion; tecnologias del aprendizaje y el conocimiento (TAC) The purpose of this article is to share the interdisciplinary work experience of Campus Virtual UNLa team in the virtualization processes of different curricular spaces of Universidad Nacional de Lanus (Argentina). Keywords: virtual campus, virtualization; multidisciplinary team; innovation; information and communication technologies (ICT)