Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inflationary Pressures in Selected Sub-Saharan African Countries:1970–1986

This paper examines the monetary and structural sources of inflation in selected Sub-Saharan African countries using data for the period 1970–1986. Monetary variables, such as the money supply and exchange rates, were combined with structural variables such as food production, exports, imports, and debt service to determine the effects on inflation. The results show that changes in the monetary factors are key in explaining inflation in the region. The paper concludes that the ongoing structural adjustment programs, with a focus on exchange rate alignments and efficiency in public finance, may be steps in the right direction. [E31]
A Stable Algorithm to Calculate Steady-State Probability & Frequency of a Markov System

This paper presents a stable method to calculate the steady-state probability and frequency of encountering a state in a Markov system. The method modifies the state transition matrix by reducing one state in each iteration until the Markov system reduces to a 2-state model. An algorithm for computer implementation is developed to calculate the probability and frequency of each state. Systems with up to 64 Markov states were solved using the approach. In each case, the method gave accurate results. The method does not involve any subtraction, so the method eliminates a source of subtractive cancellation errors. In contrast, the standard Gauss-elimination or Gauss-Jordan techniques can be affected by cancellation errors. A numerical example illustrates our approach.
The Rise of Casual Work in Nigeria: Who Loses, Who Benefits?

The use of casual labour has been a source of ongoing conflict between workers, labour unions, and employers in most organizations in Nigeria. Many scholars and commentators have written and spoken extensively on the subject matter, yet in most cases their approach tended to be one-sided, skewed and lack duality of purpose. Attempt to look at it from another angle or juxtapose its position is rare and almost absent. Therefore, this paper through content analysis of literature review examined the rise of casual work in Nigeria vis-a-vis its challenges and benefits to Nigerians. It anchored casual work in Nigeria on Neo-liberal and Equity theories. The paper opined that casual work is not in all cases bad as most people think. It has its benefits and in some cases, it is a matter of choice. Also, the paper is of the view that the benefits of casual jobs constitute the price of progress. Key Words: Casualization, Casual Work, Rise, benefits, loses, Nigeria
Molecular brake pad hypothesis: pulling off the brakes for emotional memory

Abstract Under basal conditions histone deacetylases (HDACs) and their associated co-repressor complexes serve as molecular ‘brake pads’ to prevent the gene expression required for long-term memory formation. Following a learning event, HDACs and their co-repressor complexes are removed from a subset of specific gene promoters, allowing the histone acetylation and active gene expression required for long-term memory formation. Inhibition of HDACs increases histone acetylation, extends gene expression profiles, and allows for the formation of persistent long-term memories for training events that are otherwise forgotten. We propose that emotionally salient experiences have utilized this system to form strong and persistent memories for behaviorally significant events. Consequently, the presence or absence of HDACs at a selection of specific gene promoters could serve as a critical barrier for permitting the formation of long-term memories.
Attracting High‐Skilled Immigrants: Policies in Comparative Perspective

Labour market shortages, structural problems and unfavourable demographics have all prompted governments to act, often by focusing on high-skilled immigration. However, policy responses have been very different. Some countries were able to adopt quite open high-skilled immigration policies, while others did not. This article provides a political economy explanation for this. It argues that, despite similar pressures, high-skilled immigration policy outputs vary due to shifting coalitions between disaggregated sectors of native high-skilled, low-skilled labour and capital. To probe this argument, the article examines coalitions in four countries (France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom) from the late 1990s to present, and draws on original interviews with policy-makers, unions and employers' associations; official documents and the literature on immigration, political economy and public policy. The varying labour market organization of actors informs differences in coalitions which in turn has resulted in different high-skilled immigration policy outputs, cross-nationally and over time.
Real-Time Enhancement of Dynamic Depth Videos with Non-Rigid Deformations

We propose a novel approach for enhancing depth videos containing non-rigidly deforming objects. Depth sensors are capable of capturing depth maps in real-time but suffer from high noise levels and low spatial resolutions. While solutions for reconstructing 3D details in static scenes, or scenes with rigid global motions have been recently proposed, handling unconstrained non-rigid deformations in relative complex scenes remains a challenge. Our solution consists in a recursive dynamic multi-frame super-resolution algorithm where the relative local 3D motions between consecutive frames are directly accounted for. We rely on the assumption that these 3D motions can be decoupled into lateral motions and radial displacements. This allows to perform a simple local per-pixel tracking where both depth measurements and deformations are dynamically optimized. The geometric smoothness is subsequently added using a multi-level $L_1$ minimization with a bilateral total variation regularization. The performance of this method is thoroughly evaluated on both real and synthetic data. As compared to alternative approaches, the results show a clear improvement in reconstruction accuracy and in robustness to noise, to relative large non-rigid deformations, and to topological changes. Moreover, the proposed approach, implemented on a CPU, is shown to be computationally efficient and working in real-time.
Attitudes of the Food Industry towards Safety Regulations: Descriptive Statistics and Some Major Predictors 1

A mail survey of managers of businesses that produce and sell food found that most respondents think that food safety regulations are neither too lenient nor too strict. By far the largest predictor of attitude towards regulation is the respondent’s own belief about the safety of food — those who are more convinced that food is safe are more opposed to regulation. Other smaller effects are, 1) the more the firm’s workers are perceived to be trained in safety; and 2) the more the respondent perceives customers to be concerned about safety, the less opposed they are to regulations. Moreover, 3) Producers and processors were more opposed to regulation than were those who sell the final product; 4) Those who responded after September 11, 2001 were less opposed to regulation than those who responded beforehand.
Corporate Culture and Performance: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Companies

ABSTRACT Research in Western countries has found that a company's workplace culture is significantly related to performance. This study uses Taiwanese manufacturing companies to examine the extent to which such a linkage also applies in non-Western settings. We find that an instrument used by a leading international consulting firm and others to measure corporate culture in Western settings also can distinguish between higher and lower performing Taiwanese manufacturing companies. This finding suggests that companies in non-Western settings also may benefit from monitoring their cultural configurations. Suggestions are offered on how managers can monitor and cultivate their companies' culture for attaining breakthrough performance.
Fatal injuries after cocaine use as a leading cause of death among young adults in New York City.

BACKGROUND Cocaine intoxication can lead to fatal cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. In addition, the neurobehavioral effects of cocaine may increase the likelihood that a user will receive violent fatal injuries. Since New York City is a center for the importation and distribution of cocaine, we sought to determine the extent of cocaine use among city residents with fatal injuries. METHODS Among a total of 14,843 residents of New York City who received fatal injuries from 1990 through 1992, we determined the proportion who used cocaine shortly before their deaths. We also determined the population-based rates of fatal injuries that were known to follow cocaine use and the proportion of all deaths of New York City residents that was represented by these cases for each demographic stratum. For adults 15 to 44 years of age, fatal injury after cocaine use was ranked with other causes of death as though it was a separate cause. RESULTS Cocaine use, as measured by the detection of the metabolite benzoylecgonine in urine or blood, was found in 26.7 percent of all New York City residents receiving fatal injuries; free cocaine was detected in 18.3 percent. Approximately one third of deaths after cocaine use were the result of drug intoxication, but two thirds involved traumatic injuries resulting from homicides, suicides, traffic accidents, and falls. If fatal injury after cocaine use was considered as a separate cause of death, it would rank among the five leading causes of death among those 15 to 44 years of age in New York City. CONCLUSIONS Fatal injuries among cocaine users account for a substantial proportion of all deaths among young adults in New York City.
Relationship between IS901 in theMycobacterium avium Complex Strains Isolated from Birds, Animals, Humans, and the Environment and Virulence for Poultry

ABSTRACT A total of 738 strains of Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) were examined in biological experiments on poultry by use of PCR methods with primers for detection of the insertion sequence IS901. Serotype strains of MAC from all known 28 serotypes were examined. Further strains were isolated from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-negative and HIV-positive patients, 6 animal species, 17 bird species, and the environment. Of 165 strains virulent for poultry, characterized by generalized tuberculosis, 164 strains contained IS901, a result which is statistically highly significant (P, 0.01). The remaining 573 strains were nonvirulent; however, IS901 was present in 24 strains. From among 20 strains of serotypes 1, 2, and 3, IS901 was found in 15 strains, only 5 of which were virulent for poultry. The remaining 111 strains, of serotypes 4 to 28, were nonvirulent and did not incorporate IS901. None of the 152 strains isolated from humans was virulent for poultry, including 12 strains which were IS901 positive.
Good Performance of the SpectraCellRA System for Typing of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Isolates

ABSTRACT Typing of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) remains necessary in order to assess whether transmission of MRSA occurred and to what extent infection prevention measures need to be taken. Raman spectroscopy (SpectraCellRA [SCRA]; RiverD International, Rotterdam, The Netherlands) is a recently developed tool for bacterial typing. In this study, the performance (typeability, discriminatory power, reproducibility, workflow, and costs) of the SCRA system was evaluated for typing of MRSA strains isolated from patients and patients' household members who were infected with or colonized by MRSA. We analyzed a well-documented collection of 113 MRSA strains collected from 54 households. The epidemiological relationship between the MRSA strains within one household was used as the gold standard. Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) was used for discrepancy analysis. The results of SCRA analysis on the strain level corresponded with epidemiological data for 108 of 113 strains, a concordance of 95.6%. When analyzed at the household level, the results of SCRA were correct for 49 out of 54 households, a concordance of 90.7%. Concordance on the strain level with epidemiological data for PFGE was 93.6% (103/110 isolates typed). Concordance on the household level with epidemiological data for PFGE was 93.5% (49/53 households analyzed). With PFGE regarded as the reference standard, the conclusions reached with Raman spectroscopy were identical to those reached with PFGE in 100 of 105 cases (95.2%). The reproducibility of SCRA was found to be 100%. We conclude that the SpectraCellRA system is a fast, easy-to-use, and highly reproducible typing platform for outbreak analysis that can compete with the currently used typing techniques.
Evolution of Directional Preferences in the Supplementary Eye Field during Acquisition of Conditional Oculomotor Associations

We assessed the preferred directions (PDs) of supplementary eye field (SEF) neurons during conditional visuomotor learning. Monkeys learned to select one of four saccadic eye movements in response to a foveal instruction stimulus (IS). ISs were either familiar or novel. Each familiar IS reliably evoked one saccade: 7° left, right, up, or down from the central fixation point. Novel ISs initially triggered virtually random responses among those four possibilities, but the monkeys ultimately learned to select the instructed saccade. As reported previously, activity rates on novel IS trials significantly changed during learning. Some of these cells (learning-dependent) also have significant modulation on familiar IS trials, but others (learning-selective) lack such activity. Of the former, the familiar IS activity can be either directionally selective or omnidirectional. For most neurons, PDs were apparent during all phases of learning, but they were rarely constant. Only infrequently did a neuron’s PD for novel ISs closely match that for familiar ISs throughout the learning process. In directional learning-dependent cells, the PD usually reoriented near the end of learning to resemble that for familiar IS trials. In omnidirectional cells, initially evident PDs dissipated with learning, even as the cell became more strongly modulated. Learning-selective cells typically began with significant PDs, but became unmodulated as learning progressed. Our findings show a pervasive lability in SEF PDs that may reflect a flexible and rapid remapping between inputs and responses within the premotor cortical network.
Reflections on the curious absence of employers, labour market incentives and labour market regulation in English 14–19 policy: first signs of a change in direction?

This article explores the previously quite marked absence from English policy debates on 14–19 education of issues that, in other developed countries, would be seen as key elements in the policy landscape. These are: the role of employers as providers of learning; the structure of employers’demand for skills, their recruitment and selection practices and the incentives this creates; the impact of labour market regulation on patterns of post‐compulsory participation in vocational education and training. This article argues that these issues help explain our comparatively modest participation rates at 16–18 and that failure to confront such underlying structural factors makes progress on the kind of agenda raised by Tomlinson and the subsequent White Paper extremely problematic. It is suggested that recent developments may mark the start of a change in policy, with labour market issues gaining a new prominence. The article concentrates on the English institutional context, but many of the general points about the labour market and its interaction with young peoples’decisions about education and training hold good across the whole of the UK.
An Efficient Maximum Likelihood Method for Direction-of-Arrival Estimation via Sparse Bayesian Learning

The computationally prohibitive multi-dimensional searching procedure greatly restricts the application of the maximum likelihood (ML) direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation method in practical systems. In this paper, we propose an efficient ML DOA estimator based on a spatially overcomplete array output formulation. The new method first reconstructs the array output on a predefined spatial discrete grid under the sparsity constraint via sparse Bayesian learning (SBL), thus obtaining a spatial power spectrum estimate that also indicates the coarse locations of the sources. Then a refined 1-D searching procedure is introduced to estimate the signal directions one by one based on the reconstruction result. The new method is able to estimate the incident signal number simultaneously. Numerical results show that the proposed method surpasses state-of-the-art methods largely in performance, especially in demanding scenarios such as low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), limited snapshots and spatially adjacent signals.
Design architecture of generic DFT/DCT 1D and 2D engine controlled by SW instructions

In this paper, a hardware implementation for generic DFT/IDFT DCT/IDCT 1D (N-point) and 2D (N × M point) processor is proposed, as N/M in the form of 2x × 3y to support different communication and signal processing applications. An in-place bank of 2 N-word dual-port memories with a continuous address generator is adopted to accommodate high-speed applications. This engine is controlled by software instructions running on a simple embedded processor to provide more flexibility in switching between different modes and desired number of points, instead of a complex hardware controller. This software flexibility also allows the user to adapt the operations on data to match his needs.
Do Shareholders Really Prefer Risky Projects?

It is often argued that managers representing shareholders' interests tend to undertake risky projects because equity resembles a call option on a firm's assets. However, this conclusion is not generally true when bankruptcy risk is explicitly modelled. This paper compares the relative strength of the agency cost and the bankruptcy risk in determining managerial choice of cash-flow volatility in a continuous-time framework. Assume the existing debt has covenants which preclude additional borrowing and that bankruptcy is triggered when the cash balance hits zero, I show that for low levels of debt, shareholders prefer to minimize cash-flow volatility I also work out the critical face value of the debt above which shareholders are risk-seeking rather than risk-avoiding In short, bankruptcy costs being borne by equity mitigates shareholders' desire for risk.
A New Technique for Screening Chemical Toxicity to the Pulp from Dental Restorative Materials and Procedures

An in vitro test system is described which allows for quick and relatively inexpensive examination of the potential for chemical toxicity to the pulp of materials and procedures used in the restoration of single teeth. The test system consisted of two sequential steps. First, a restorative procedure was carried out on a freshly-extracted human tooth crown, to the pulpal surface of which had been attached a chamber filled with sterile tissue-culture medium. The preparation was kept at 37°C. The culture medium was removed at day one and replaced with fresh medium, which was removed at day 3. In the second step, we used a standard tissue-culture toxicity assessment technique to examine both culture medium samples for the presence of chemical toxins. In use, this system gave results which correlated well with the known clinical potential for pulpal toxicity of various dental materials and techniques. For example, zinc oxide-eugenol used as temporary filling or base had no apparent potential for toxicity. Sealing a cotton pellet containing phenol into a cavity was of high apparent potential toxicity. Acrylic resin as intracoronal or extracoronal fillings showed potential for toxicity; this potential was decreased by lining with calcium hydroxide cement. Composite resin placed onto etched dentin had apparent toxic potential, but had less such potential when placed onto unetched dentin. The technique had some advantages over previously described in vitro toxicity tests for restorative materials, because it included a step requiring diffusion of potential toxins into and through human dentin, and because it allowed for examination of variations in technique which mimic clinical behavior, and of materials used in sequence or in combination.
Forecasting the Technical Range Volatility with Moving Average (TRV-MA) Modle

When trading, investors make decisions based on not only the security and market variances but also the technical price range. However, academic literature investigating its properties is scarce. Better understandings of this risk measurement candidate are supposed to provide guidance for investors. In this paper, the statistical properties and dynamic structures of technical price range are investigated broadly with different index data, and some interesting facts are discovered: 1) the technical range volatility follows the normal distribution approximately; 2) the dynamic structure of the technical range volatility can be well described by a moving average model.To test whether the TRV-MA model could well capture the dynamic structure of the technical price range volatility, empirical studies are performed on CAC40, DAX, FTSE, HS, NIKKEI225, S&P500, and STI. To evaluate the predicting ability of the TRV-MA model, a new criteria is proposed. Based on this new criteria, the TRV-MA model does provide sharp prediction. Interesting problems based on the technical range volatility are suggested in the conclusion, better understandings of these problems are supposed to provide better understandings of the market micro-structures.According to our knowledge, this paper is the first one to investigate the statistical properties and the dynamics of technical range volatility.
Effects of monetary policy on market volatility in Taiwan

The Taiwan Central Bank sequentially reduced the rediscount rate six times from June 1 to December 31, 2008, This study focuses on examining the mitigating influence of monetary relaxation on the Taiwan stock market. Referring to Tsay (2005), this investigation uses the GARCH (1, 1) model to determine policy effectiveness in terms of reducing share volatility. Empirical findings indicate that monetary easing has mitigated, though insignificantly, returns volatility for the Taiwan weighted share index, electronics share index and financial share index.
The Shut-Down Option and Profit Sharing

Abstract Aoki's profit-sharing firm organization is associated with the option evaluation model of investment. The firm is endowed with a shut-down option it can exercise when the market price, assumed to be uncertain, falls below a certain trigger level. The distributive parameter is the result of a bargaining process and is influenced by the shut-down option. Workers can delay the firm's shut down by sharing not only profits but also losses. In that case, the workers’ policy changes both the optimal distributive parameter and the trigger price in a nontrivial way. The overall result implies an increase in the profit share going to shareholders as compared to Aoki's original finding.
Safety nets or investment in the future: Does food aid have any long‐term impact on children's growth?

This article investigates child nutrition in rural Ethiopia, examining anthropometric information collected on children aged below 5 years in 1995, and again almost 10 years later for the now young adults in 2004. It finds that children who were malnourished in their early years are far more likely to be stunted 10 years later on. The article examines the role that food aid plays in mitigating the impact of adverse events and finds that it does have a lasting effect and could have even more impact if well targeted and delivered. The findings underline the importance of investing in early childhood nutrition and tailoring public programmes to meet the needs of children. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.