Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Between the Social and the Spatial: Exploring the Multiple Dimensions of Poverty and Social Exclusion

Contents: Prologue Preface Part 1 Poverty as a Multidimensional Concept: What forms does poverty take in European societies at the beginning of the 21st century? , Serge Paugam Income, health and multi-dimensionality, A.B. Atkinson Making poverty analysis richer: multi-dimensional poverty research for social policy design, Chris de Neubourg, Keetie Roelen and Franziska Gassmann EU redistributive social policy: social exclusion transcended, Jos Berghman and Annelies Debels Care partnership, welfare and work: a historical perspective, Catharina Lis and Hugo Soly Do firms need to be '3rd places' for jobs to be good? Some comments on AndrA(c) Gorz's justification of unconditional income guarantees, Walter van Trier. Part 2 Spatial Dimensions of Poverty: Space in sociology: an exploration of a difficult conception, Christian Kesteloot, Maarten Loopmans and Pascal de Decker Changing society by rebuilding neighbourhoods: on the effects of restructuring deprived urban areas a " experiences from the Netherlands, Jack Burgers Social reconquest as a new policy paradigm: changing urban policies in the city of Rotterdam, Erik Snel and Godfried Engbersen Social capital in deprived neighbourhoods, JA rgen Friedrichs and Jennifer KlA ckner Competitiveness, cohesion, and the credit crunch: reflections on the sustainability of urban policy, Mike Raco and Tuna Tasan-Kok Explanations for the development of large housing estates in North-Western European cities, Ronald van Kempen and Karien Dekker Conclusion: building bridges between the social and the spatial? , Katrien de Boyser, Caroline Dewilde and Danielle Dierckx Bibliography Index.
A microkernel middleware architecture for distributed embedded real-time systems

Today more and more embedded real-time systems are implemented in a distributed way. These distributed embedded systems consist of a few controllers up to several hundreds. Distribution and parallelism in the design of embedded real-time systems increase the engineering challenges and require new methodological framework based on middleware. Our research work focuses on the development of a middleware that supports the design of heterogeneous distributed real-time systems and allows the use of small microcontrollers as computation nodes. Our study is aimed to a new approach that led to the development of OSA+-a scalable service-oriented real-time middleware architecture. This middleware has been used as the basic platform for different domain applications: (i) conception of an autonomous guided vehicle system based on multithreaded Java microcontrollers and (ii) development of a permanent monitoring distributed system for an oil drilling application. This paper presents the basic architecture of OSA+ and its implementation for the distributed real-time embedded systems design.
INFLUENCE OF THE ENDOTHELIAL NITRIC OXIDE SYNTHASE POLYMORPHISM ON THE PROGRESSION OF AUTOSOMAL DOMINANT POLYCYSTIC KIDNEY DISEASE AND IgA NEPHROPATHY

Background: The reason of variability of clinical course and progression to end-stage renal failure (ESRF) of two widespread chronic nephropathies—autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) and IgA nephropathy (IGAN) is not clear. The endothelial dysfunction is considered in the number of factors possibly influencing the prognosis of these nephropathies. Our study tried to verify the hypothesis that endothelial nitric oxide synthase (ecNOS) gene polymorphisms in intron 4 could have some relevance to the progression of ADPKD and/or IgA nephropathy. Methods: We examined 128 Czech patients with ADPKD (62 males, 66 females) and 93 patients with IGAN (51 males, 42 females). As a control group, we used 100 genetically unrelated healthy subjects (50 men, 50 women, mean age 51.2 ± 8.2). The genomic DNA was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the products were separated on 1.5% agarose gel and visualized by ultraviolet transillumination. We compared homozygous subjects for ecNOSb allele with homozygous and heterozygous subjects for ecNOSa allele. Results: The frequencies of ecNOSa/b + a/a and ecNOSb/b genotypes were 19% (19/100) and 81% (81/100) in the control group. The frequencies of ecNOSa/b + a/a and ecNOSb/b genotypes in ADPKD patients were: 26.6% (8/30) and 73.4% (22/30) in ADPKD patients with normal renal function, 30% (9/30) and 70% (21/30) in ADPKD with ESRF, 35.2% (18/51) and 64.8% (33/51) in young ADPKD patients, 60% (12/20) and 40% (8/20) in ADPKD patients with ESRF later than in 62 years. In IGAN, the frequencies of ecNOSa/b + a/a and ecNOSb/b genotypes were 24% (12/50) and 76% (38/50) in IgA with normal renal function and 20.9% (9/43) and 79.1% (38/43) in IgA with ESRF. Conclusion: Both in ADPKD and IGAN groups, there was no significant difference in the frequencies of ecNOS genotypes between patients with normal renal function and age matched patients with ESRF and between patients with normal renal function and control group. The frequency of ecNOSa allele was significantly higher in a number limited group ADPKD patients with ESRF later than in 62 years (Chi-square test p<0.05). This higher frequency of a allele among ADPKD patients with later onset of ESRF could suggest the trend of positive influence of a allele in ADPKD patients.
Organizing for policy implementation: The emergence and role of implementation units in policy design and oversight

Abstract The leaders of governments in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Queensland recently created “implementation” or “delivery” units at the centre, ostensibly to advise, monitor, and ensure better implementation of policy initiatives. This collection of papers seeks to explore the emergence, roles, functions, and accomplishments of policy implementation and delivery units, as well as their prospects. This overview paper provides a framework for analyzing and assessing the work of these units to date, beginning with a synopsis of the evolution of thinking on implementation, and turning to the new environment for governance, policy development, and implementation. It casts policy implementation and delivery units as one of several “adhocracies” that populate the centre of government, which may take on quite different roles. The paper provides an overview of the case studies and key findings.
Genre classification of paintings

Extensive digitization efforts in the recent years have led to a large increase of digitized and online available fine-art collections. With digitization of artworks, we aim to preserve all those valuable evidences of various human creative expressions, as well as make them available to a broader audience. The digitalization process of artworks should not constrain only to fulfilling the purpose of preservation, but also serve as a starting point for exploring of this type of data in a novel way, which is made possible with the rise of new achievements in computer vision. In the domain of computer analysis of visual art there are various ongoing research challenges. In this paper, we explore different image feature extraction methods and their applicability in the task of classifying painting by genre. Our dataset includes paintings of various styles grouped in seven genre categories. We achieved an accuracy of 77.57% for the task of genre classification. We concluded that the best performance is achieved when using features derived from a pretrained deep convolutional neural network.
Systemic Risk, Financial Crisis, and Credit Risk Insurance

Differing from conventional insurance firms whose underwriting business does not contribute to systemic risk, credit risk insurance companies providing credit protections for debt obligations are exposed to systemic risk. We show that credit risk insurers (CRIs) underperformed conventional insurance companies during the 2007–2009 financial crisis, and such underperformance is attributed to the greater systemic risk of CRIs. We also find that the credit spreads of insured bonds increase significantly after their insurers are downgraded or put in the negative watch list. We control for alternative factors affecting bond credit spreads and the result is robust.
Bias, accuracy and explainability of the Ohlson (1995) valuation model vs. the traditional dividend, abnormal earnings and free cash flow models: evidence from the Spanish stock market

ABSTRACT In this paper we compare the bias, accuracy and explainability of the Ohlson (1995) valuation model versus the traditional dividend, abnormal earnings and free cash flow models for a sample of Spanish listed firms over the period 2000–2008. The study aims to replicate the actual behaviour of financial practitioners when they estimate the value of a firm's shares. Our results document that the most accurate model is the Ohlson (1995) specification that considers the «other information» variable and intermediate persistence for both abnormal earnings and the «other information» variable. The abnormal earnings model also has a high performance, especially for the zero-growth case, confirming that a firm cannot increase abnormal earnings indefinitely. Finally, we have also assessed the relative performance of each model by computing future abnormal returns from a strategy based on the V/P ratio (intrinsic value divided by price). Our results provide evidence that most models are able, on average, of identifying overvalued and undervalued shares.
An examination of the relationship of governance mechanisms to performance

The purpose of this paper is to draw together the many different facets of corporate governance that have been examined in the extensive literature in both strategic management and finance. In particular, we are interested in the relationship between the typical agency theory constructs of monitoring, incentives and ownership structure, with financial performance. First, we catalog this large body of work to see where there are still unanswered questions. We find that previous work has generally focused on examining subsets of governance mechanisms, typically studying one or two governance variables in any one study. Our view is that the most critical issue still to examine, is the ability of firms to choose among a number of different governance mechanisms in order to create the appropriate structure for that firm, given the environment in which it operates. We identify a sample of firms and examine CEO compensation, CEO tenure, board composition, leadership structure and ownership structure and their contribution to both market performance, Market Value Added, and risk-adjusted accounting performance, Economic Value Added. In addition, we control for ownership by block-holders, industry performance, and firm size. We examine these measures both individually and as interactions. Our results indicate that while some of the traditional agency variables do impact performance, both individually and as interactions, industry performance is a strong and significant driver of performance for our sample of firms. We conclude that, while there is evidence to support that firms may use governance packages to deal with agency issues, further research could provide important evidence on these issues by focusing on examining a more refined, industry-level context.
Performance of Russian SMEs: exploration, exploitation and strategic entrepreneurship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the ability of Russian firms to develop strategic entrepreneurship (SE) as a source of sustainable competitive advantage in a turbulent and hostile business environment. It aims to suggest a model of SE that includes two components – exploration and exploitation – and to test this model on 500 Russian small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) which show the influence of these components on firm performance. It also aims to address one of the most fundamental questions confronting the international business (IB) field: “What determines the success and failure of firms around the world? ”. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents empirical research with a regression analysis of 500 Russian SMEs operating in Moscow and St Petersburg in three major industries: information technologies and communications (ICT), hotels, restaurants, and cafes (HoReCa) and wholesale/retail.Findings – The Russian firms show a positive influence of exploration and exploitation.
Assessing Hybrid Policy of Carbon Tax and Emissions Trading under Uncertainty for Preserving Global Environment

Abstract In this paper we show the effectiveness of a hybrid policy of carbon tax and emissions trading under uncertainty compared with the use of each policy independently. A mathematical model is described for assessing quantitatively how the hybrid policy of carbon tax and emissions trading would be effective to achieve the targeted reduction of the post-Kyoto target. We use a method of decision analysis called Prospect Theory under Uncertainty.
Determinants for Sensitivity of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Coreceptor CXCR4 to the Bicyclam AMD3100

ABSTRACT The bicyclam AMD3100 is a potent and selective inhibitor of the replication of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 and type 2 (HIV-1 and HIV-2). It was recently demonstrated that the compound inhibited HIV entry through CXCR4 but not through CCR5. Selectivity of AMD3100 for CXCR4 was further indicated by its lack of effect on HIV-1 and HIV-2 infection mediated by the CCR5, CCR3, Bonzo, BOB, and US28, coreceptors. AMD3100 completely blocked HIV-1 infection mediated by a mutant CXCR4 bearing a deletion of most of the amino-terminal extracellular domain. In contrast, relative resistance to AMD3100 was conferred by different single amino acid substitutions in the second extracellular loop (ECL2) or in the adjacent membrane-spanning domain, TM4. Only substitutions of a neutral residue for aspartic acid and of a nonaromatic residue for phenylalanine (Phe) were associated with drug resistance. This suggests a direct interaction of AMD3100 with these amino acids rather than indirect effects of their mutation on the CXCR4 structure. The interaction of aspartic acids of ECL2 and TM4 with AMD3100 is consistent with the positive charge of bicyclams, which might block HIV-1 entry by preventing electrostatic interactions between CXCR4 and the HIV-1 envelope protein gp120. Other features of AMD3100 must account for its high antiviral activity, in particular the presence of an aromatic linker between the cyclam units. This aromatic group might engage in hydrophobic interactions with the Phe-X-Phe motifs of ECL2 or TM4. These results confirm the importance of ECL2 for the HIV coreceptor activity of CXCR4.
Policy Preferences of FOMC Members as Revealed by Dissenting Votes

THE COMPOSITION OF THE FEDERAL OPEN MARKET COMMITTEE, the ability to predict the effect of policy decisions on economic and f1nancialvariables, and political influence from the White House and the Congress are all potentially significant determinants of monetary policy decisions. This study uses the record of dissenting votes from Federal Open Market Committee meetings to consider the relevance of these influences. Tests for differences between voting patterns of bank presidents versus members of the Board of Governors, and differences during various historical periods provide insight into four questions: (1) Are the policy preferences of bank presidents different from those of the members of the Board? (2) Does uncertainty about the economic and financial results of policy actions influence the level of dissent? (3) Is there a difference in the pattern of dissent under different chairmen? and (4) Is there effective political influence on monetary policymakers? The legitimacy of district bank presidents serving on the FOMC has been challenged in the courts and the legislature. Challengers fear that district bank presidents, who serve without executive or legislative approval, prefer policy that produces lower inflation and higher unemployment, relative to the policy preferred by members of the Board who are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Rogoff (1985) argues that, in the presence of market distortions, it is better for society to have central bankers who attach a larger weight than the society's
Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea

Executive Overview Empowerment is a tantalizing notion that seems to offer organizations the promise of more focused, energetic, and creative work from employees. But after years of trying, many organizations have not realized the promise the idea held. This article presents some reasons why: precipitous empowerment mandates, overreliance on a narrow psychological concept of empowerment, one-size-fits-all empowerment, neglecting the needs of power sharers, a piece-meal approach, and distortions of accountability. This article offers some ways to implement empowerment programs more effectively: enlarge power, be sure of what you want to do, differentiate among employees, support power sharers, build fitting systems, and focus on results. The article contends that empowerment is still a useful concept that we need to learn to apply better.
Fear and Market Failure: Global Imbalances and 'Self-Insurance'

This paper proposes an integrated framework to analyze jointly two key issues: the emergence of global imbalances and the precautionary motive for accumulating reserves. Standard models of general equilibrium would predict modest current account surpluses in the emerging markets if they face higher risk than the US itself. But, with pronounced Loss Aversion in emerging markets, their precautionary savings can generate substantial global imbalances, especially if there is an inefficient supply of global insurance. In principle, lower real interest rates will ensure that aggregate demand equals supply at a global level (though the required real interest may be negative). While a precautionary savings glut appears to be a temporary phenomenon, a process of correction triggered by a Sudden Stop in capital flows to the United States might lead to a hard landing.
Therapeutic Benefits in Atopic Dermatitis Care from the Patients' Perspective: Results of the German National Health Care Study ‘Atopic Health'

Background/Aims: Numerous therapies are recommended to treat atopic dermatitis. The German national health care study ‘Atopic Health' generated nationwide data on the care situation from the patients' perspective. Methods: Data for 1,678 adult patients were collected within a retrospective cohort study throughout the year 2010. Six scores to capture satisfaction with care, quality of life (Dermatology Life Quality Index, EQ-5D-VAS), therapeutic success and benefits (Patient Benefit Index) were analyzed using descriptive methods and analysis of variance. Results: 82.1% of patients were highly satisfied with their treatment. Topical corticosteroids and climate therapies were associated with the best success ratings. Quality of life was moderately impaired (mean Dermatology Life Quality Index 8.5 ± 6.5). 88.4% of the patients indicated a relevant therapeutic benefit (Patient Benefit Index ≥1) with significantly better scores for topical immunomodulating therapies and climate therapies. Conclusion: The most frequently applied therapies presented pleasant success and benefit ratings, even if quality of life could be improved for more than one third of patients.
Forces required to operate controls on farm tractors: Implications for young operators

Farm tractors account for the majority of fatal injuries to adolescents working in agriculture and therefore remain a leading occupational priority. The question of whether these injuries occur because adolescents are assigned tractor jobs beyond their physical capabilities has not been answered. The purpose of this study was to estimate the activation forces required to operate controls on 40 tractors in common use in the US and compare them with existing estimates of physical strength for children of varying ages and with recommended ergonomic force limits for repeatedly engaging controls. Activation forces for steering, brakes and clutch were measured on each tractor. The main study finding was that the activation forces required to operate tractors typically exceeded the physical abilities of most children aged 13 to 17 years. This raises serious questions about the ability of children to safely operate tractors in common use on US farms. This study provides an ergonomic approach for evaluating the potential mismatch between young people's strength capabilities and forces required in operating farm tractors. This approach could be used in similar situations where adolescents may operate vehicles (e.g. all-terrain vehicles), machinery or other mechanical devices requiring activation of levers and controls. Study findings potentially inform the establishment of occupational policies surrounding tractor operation by young people.
Understanding Recent Trends in Residential Mobility in Council Housing in England

Variations in stock turnover in social housing are important for a number of reasons. First, they influence the supply of properties available to meet housing need; secondly, they have implications for housing management costs and performance; and, thirdly, they are a barometer of neighbourhood stability and cohesion. The paper examines national, regional and local trends in council housing turnover rates over the past 20 years, focusing on changes during the first half of the 1990s. Linking data from various secondary sources together with new evidence, the paper explores the elements involved in the generation of relets and examines the characteristics and motivations of households exiting from the council sector. Finally, the article reports results of statistical modelling of relet rates at the local authority level which reveal new insights on the causal factors involved.
In the Bookstores

The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age by Nathan D. Wolfe; Macmillan, 2011.ISBN-13: 978-1846142987. 14.99 GBP. 320 pages.A warning, for those with a nervous disposition this is not a book .
Identifying adolescents at highly elevated risk for suicidal behavior in the emergency department.

OBJECTIVE The feasibility and concurrent validity of adolescent suicide risk screening in medical emergency departments (EDs) has been documented. The objectives of this short-term prospective study of adolescents who screened positive for suicide risk in the ED were: 1) to examine adolescents' rate of suicidal behavior during the 2 months following their ED visits and compare it with reported rates for psychiatric samples; and 2) to identify possible predictors of acute risk for suicidal behavior in this at-risk sample. METHOD Participants were 81 adolescents, ages 14-19 years, seeking services for psychiatric and nonpsychiatric chief complaints, who screened positive for suicide risk because of recent suicidal ideation, a suicide attempt, and/or depression plus alcohol or substance misuse. A comprehensive assessment of suicidal behavior, using the Columbia-Suicide Severity Rating Scale, was conducted at baseline and 2 month follow-up. RESULTS Six adolescents (7.4%) reported a suicide attempt and 15 (18.5%) engaged in some type of suicidal behavior (actual, aborted, or interrupted suicide attempt; preparatory behavior) during the 2 months following their ED visit. These rates suggest that this screen identified a high-risk sample. Furthermore, adolescents who screened positive for suicidal ideation and/or attempt plus depression and alcohol/substance misuse were most likely to engage in future suicidal behavior (38.9%). CONCLUSIONS In this study, use of a higher screen threshold (multiple suicide risk factors) showed promise for identifying highly elevated acute risk for suicidal behavior.