Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Long-Run Effects of Job Changes and Unemployment among Male Teenagers

Drawing on the Young Men's Cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys, we examine the long-run effects of teenage labor market experience on subsequent adult wages. Our study expands on earlier work by considering the effects of both unemployment and job mobility during the period of transition from school to work. We conclude that the net effect of job-switching during the teen years is a positive one for both blacks and whites. Furthermore, we find that the "scarring" effects of teen unemployment are overstated and that short periods of unemployment are associated with higher average wages some 8-10 years later. Finally, the net effect of teenage labor market experience on subsequent wages is positive for both races, though more so for blacks. The black teen labor market experience actually serves to narrow the subsequent black/white wage differential.
THE IMPACT OF MERGERS IN U.S. PETROLEUM INDUSTRY ON WHOLESALE GASOLINE PRICES

"Starting in the mid-1990s, the U.S. petroleum industry experienced a wave of mergers, several of them between large petroleum companies that were previously competitors. Using an econometric analysis of terminal city-specific data, this study finds that the majority of the mergers led to higher wholesale gasoline prices in the United States in the mid-1990s through 2000. " ("JEL" L7, L13, L40) Copyright No Claim to Original U.S. Government Works.
Value Differences among Leaders and the Workforce in Australia

Broad agreement on societal values is an important determinant of political legitimacy and stability in liberal democracies. This article examines the extent of such agreement in Australia by comparing the opinions of leaders in government, business and trade unions with the views of the workforce on a series of key topics related to institutions, social issues, and policy measures. The results show that on matters of institutional performance, economic management and the causes of unemployment, leaders hold views quite distinct from those of the workforce. On other issues, leaders themselves are in disagreement, and trade union leaders in particular are more likely to side with the workforce than with other leaders. At other times - for example, in evaluating mass media - the views of trade union leaders are at odds with those of the workforce they represent. These results reveal no clear or consistent pattern of value cleavages, either between leaders and the workforce, or between business and labour. For the most part, values are pragmatic and ad hoc, and reflect self-interest on particular issues rather than a consistent cleavage of sentiment or belief.
Labor Productivity Convergence Dynamics within the Euro Zone: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination

Twelve years ago, eleven European countries voluntarily abandoned their home currencies and joined the Euro. The founding fathers of the Euro believed that creation of the common currency would strengthen integration among the members and catalyze economic convergence progress within the common currency area. This study examines this issue in detail. I focus on labor productivity convergence and study it at sectoral level in order to figure out dynamics of different industries which are subject to different economic fundamentals. The sectors under study are electrical and optical machines (ELECOM), which denotes the IT industry in a specific country, goods production excluding electrical machinery, and market services excluding post and telecommunication. The empirical results reveal the fact that in the Euro era, there is no labor productivity convergence within the first wave Euro zone countries in any of three sectoral categories. This result largely stems from two facts. First, the initial integration level among the Euro zone countries prior to joining the Euro was not developed enough to catalyze labor productivity convergence progress. On top of that, the creation of the Euro has not improved economic integration among the members to the extent estimated at its launch.
Targeted therapy vs chemotherapy: which has had more impact on survival in lung cancer? The significant impact of chemotherapy in lung cancer.

Chemotherapy and targeted therapy both have earned their place in the treatment of lung cancer, but which has made the larger contribution? In this month’s Counterpoints section, Dr D. Ross Camidge of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center makes the case for targeted therapy, whereas Dr Mark A. Socinski of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center makes the case for chemotherapy. Targeted Therapy vs Chemotherapy: Which Has Had More Impact on Survival in Lung Cancer?
Cytochrome P450 1B1 Gene Polymorphisms as Predictors of Anticancer Drug Activity: Studies with In vitro Models

Cytochrome P450 1B1 (CYP1B1) is found in tumor tissue and is suspected to play a role in oncogenesis and drug resistance. CYP1B1 gene polymorphisms have been associated with the risk of developing lung and other cancers. They may be associated with tumor response to anticancer drugs. We have determined 4 frequent nonsynonymous gene polymorphisms of CYP1B1 in the human tumor cell lines panels of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research (JFCR): rs10012 (R48G), rs1056827 (A119S), rs1056836 (L432V), and rs1800440 (N453S). Numerous anticancer drugs have been tested against these panels that offer the opportunity to detect associations between gene polymorphisms and drug sensitivity. CYP1B1 single nucleotide polymorphisms were in marked linkage disequilibrium. The L432V allelic variants were significantly associated with reduced sensitivity to DNA-interacting anticancer agents, alkylators, camptothecins, topoisomerase II inhibitors, and some antimetabolites. For instance, in the NCI panel, cell lines homozygous for the V432 allele were globally 2-fold resistant to alkylating agents (P = 5 × 10−10) and 4.5-fold to camptothecins (P = 6.6 × 10−9) than cell lines homozygous for the L432 allele. Similar features were exhibited by the JFCR panel. Cell lines homozygous for the V432 allele were globally less sensitive to DNA-interfering drugs than cell lines having at least 1 common allele. There was no significant association between mRNA expression of CYP1B1 and CYP1B1 genotype, and no significant association between CYP1B1 mRNA expression and drug cytotoxicity. These observations open the way to clinical studies exploring the role of CYP1B1 gene polymorphisms for predicting tumor sensitivity to chemotherapy. Mol Cancer Ther; 9(12); 3315–21. ©2010 AACR.
The welfare state between new stimuli and new pressures: Austrian social policy and the EU

Austria has traditionally belonged to the group of Western European countries with highly distinctive systems of welfare provision, focused mainly on the needs of past and present contributors, and their families (Badelt and Osterle, 1998; Talos and Worister, 1998). Its performance in social policy terms – like that of Sweden and Finland – has thus been markedly different from the comparatively modest provision characteristic of the European Community/Union prior to the three countries’ accession in 1995. By then, fundamental strategic decisions had already been taken within the EU, with the introduction of the single market, the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, and the adoption of plans for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). At the same time, important changes were taking place in the context of social provision inside Austria: new political priorities were being set, unemployment was rising, competitive pressures were growing. The welfare state was also coming under clear pressure from various sources: funding problems, growing numbers taking early retirement, the risk of poverty. This coincidence prompts three questions: To what extent did, and does, Austria’s EU accession affect its social policy performance? ; How do these effects compare with the expectations raised before accession? ; What feedback effects, if any, were – and are – there on the EU as a whole? This article will examine these questions by analysing the social policy effects of Austria’s entry into the EU in various spheres. While expectations and the immediate impact of Austria’s accession will be discussed in the first section, the second section is devoted to the interaction between Austrian and EU social policy in terms of underlying principles, to the effects at institutional level, and to examples drawn from specific social policy areas.
Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries

This essential collection contains the most influential articles written over the past two decades that help us to understand the role of entrepreneurs in the development process, both theoretically and empirically. These important papers span a wide methodological range, from theoretical models, over cross-country studies, to firm- and household-level studies, utilizing both regression analysis and simulation techniques.
Polymorphisms of Human Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Gene Are Associated with Acute Cerebral Infarction in the Chinese Population

Background and Purpose: Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays a key role in the development of cerebral infarction as a major mediator of angiogenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the VEGF gene polymorphisms were associated with the risks of acute cerebral infarction. Methods: We examined the distribution of three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), –1154G/A, 936C/T and –2578C/A, in the promoter and coding region of the VEGF gene in DNA samples from 147 Chinese patients with acute cerebral infarction and 131 control subjects. Results: There was nosignificant difference in allele and genotype distributions of –1154G/A, 936C/T and –2578C/A with the risk of acute cerebral infarction when compared with controls. However, haplotype analysis from the above-mentioned three polymorphisms showed that haplotype ACC was significantly lower in patients with acute cerebral infarction (0.020) than in controls (0.054) (p = 0.034). Conclusions: These data suggested that the –1154/, 936/ and –2578/ ACC haplotype was associated with the risk of acute cerebral infarction with an OR of 0.361, and it may reduce the risk of acute cerebral infarction through the regulation of VEGF expression.
Influence of pr-M Cleavage on the Heterogeneity of Extracellular Dengue Virus Particles

ABSTRACT During dengue virus replication, an incomplete cleavage of the envelope glycoprotein prM, generates a mixture of mature (prM-less) and prM-containing, immature extracellular particles. In this study, sequential immunoprecipitation and cryoelectron microscopy revealed a third type of extracellular particles, the partially mature particles, as the major prM-containing particles in a dengue serotype 2 virus. Changes in the proportion of viral particles in the pr-M junction mutants exhibiting altered levels of prM cleavage suggest that the partially mature particles may represent an intermediate subpopulation in the virus maturation pathway. These findings are consistent with a model suggesting the progressive mode of prM cleavage.
Energy Saving Mechanisms for MAC Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency is a primary requirement in a wireless sensor network (WSN). This is a major design parameter in medium access control (MAC) protocols for WSN due to limited resources in sensor nodes that include low battery power. Hence a proposed MAC protocol must be energy efficient by reducing the potential energy wastes. Developing such a MAC protocol has been a hot research area in WSN. To avoid wasting the limited energy, various energy saving mechanisms are proposed for MAC protocols. These mechanisms have a common design objective—to save energy to maximize the network lifetime. This paper presents a survey on various energy saving mechanisms that are proposed for MAC protocols in WSN. We present a detailed discussion of these mechanisms and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We also discuss MAC protocols that use these energy saving mechanisms.
Repeat DUI Offenders Who Have Had a Drug Diagnosis: Are They More Prone to Traffic Crashes and Violations?

Objective: Study objectives are to test for differences (1) in rates of negative traffic outcomes between DUI offenders who have lifetime drug use disorders (DUD) and those with no lifetime DUD; and (2) by drug class for those with a DUD. Methods: The study sample of 379 male and 74 female repeat DUI offenders was interviewed using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Results: Compared to those with an alcohol use disorder (AUD) only, the relative risk of being involved in a vehicular crash was greater for those with a central nervous system (CNS) depressant use disorder. The risk of being convicted of a traffic offense was higher for those with any DUD and for those with a CNS stimulant use disorder. Differences by class of drug used, after adjusting for demographics, were a 47 percent (confidence interval: 6–103%) greater risk of being in a crash with a CNS depressant use disorder and 28 percent (confidence interval: 11–48%) greater risk of a traffic conviction with a stimulant use disorder. Conclusions: Results underscore the increased risk of negative traffic outcomes among repeat DUI offenders diagnosed with DUD, particularly CNS depressant disorders, supporting the call to establish policies that include comprehensive evaluation and treatment for this population.
Software Adoption under Network Effects: Optimal Seeding, Sequencing, and Pricing

Understanding the process of software adoption is of paramount importance to software start-ups. We study a monopolistic seller’s optimal seeding, sequencing, and pricing strategies under network effects. We demonstrate the importance of adoption sequencing as well as controllability over the seeding process to seller’s profit, consumer surplus, and social welfare. Under multi-pricing, full information, and full control over the seeding process, we show that all segments contain only paying customers except the first one, which contains both seeded and paying customers; and segments are opened in order of the customer valuation. Further, the seller’s optimal strategy is socially optimal. Under single-pricing and limited seeding control, worst case seeding (where all seeds go to the high-valuation customers) leads to higher social welfare and consumer surplus than uniform seeding, as the former covers a larger portion of the market while charging a lower price.
MiR-19b suppresses PTPRG to promote breast tumorigenesis

Protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type G (PTPRG) is an important tumor suppressor gene in multiple human cancers. In this study, we found that PTPRG protein levels were downregulated in breast cancer tissues while the mRNA levels varied irregularly, implying a post-transcriptional mechanism was involved. Because microRNAs are powerful post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression, we used bioinformatics analysis to search for microRNAs that potentially targets PTPRG in the setting of breast cancer. We identified two specific binding sites for miR-19b in the 3′-untranslated region of PTPRG. We further identified an inverse correlation between miR-19b and PTPRG protein levels, but not mRNA levels, in human breast cancer tissues. By overexpressing or knocking down miR-19b in MCF-7 cells and MDA-231 cells, we experimentally confirmed that miR-19b directly suppresses PTPRG expression. Furthermore, we determined that the inhibition of PTPRG by miR-19b leads to increased proliferation, stimulated cell migration and reduced apoptosis. Taken together, our findings provide the first evidence that miR-19b inhibits PTPRG expression to promote tumorigenesis in human breast cancer.
The Wheat War of 1994

Following the signing of the 1989 Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement, sales of Canadian wheat to the United States grew rapidly. This resulted in a series of trade disputes, culminating in an investigation by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) into the impacts of U.S. imports of Canadian wheat on the U.S. wheat farm program. A USITC finding of “material interference” would have led to a recommendation to implement tariffs or quantitative restrictions against Canadian wheat under Section 22 of the U.S. farm program legislation. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) claimed such material interference, but the U.S. flour millers, pasta makers and grain handlers, along with Canadian grain industry interests, testified that the true effects of imports are in the order of one–tenth of the effects claimed by the USDA. USITC staff analysis led to intermediate estimates of effects. This study explores the impacts of Canada–U.S. wheat trade on U.S. wheat prices and program costs, explains some of the differences in measured effects, and reports the outcome of the dispute. L'accroissement rapide des ventes canadiennes de ble aux Eats–Unis qui a suivi la mise en place de l'accord ALE a donne lieu a une serie de differends commerciaux aboutissant a une enquete de la Commission americaine du commerce international (ITC) sur les impacts des importations americaines de ble canadien sur les programmes du ble aux Etats–Unis. Un constat d'interffence materielle par l'ITC aurait menea une recommandation d'imposition de tarif douanier ou de restriction quantitative a l'egard du ble canadien au titre de l'article 22 de la Loi americaine de l'agriculture. Le USDA pretendait a l'existence d'une telle interfence, mais les meuniers, les pastiers et les manutentionnaires de grains americains, ainsi que les representants du secteur canadien des cereales ont pu demontrer que les effets reels des importations ne s'etablissaient qu'a environ un dixieme des effets pretendus par le USDA. Les impacts etablis par l'enquete de l'ITC se situaient a mi–chemin entre les deux pretentions. La presente etude scrute les impacts des echanges de ble canado–americains sur le prix du ble americain et sur les cous du programme americain. Ils expliquent quelques–unes des differences observees entre les effets mesures et commentent l'issue du differend.
Software Quality Assessment in an Agile Environment

Continuous improvement is a key factor for survival in today’s turbulent business environment. This counts for civil engineering and even more so in the fast-paced world of information technology and software engineering. The agile methodologies, like scrum, have a dedicated step in the process which targets the improvement of the development process and software products. Crucial for process improvement is to gain information which enables you to assess the state of the process and its products. From the status information you can plan actions for improvement and also assess the success of those actions. This study constructs a model which measure the software quality of the development process. The software quality is dependent on the functional and structural quality of the software products, as well as the quality of the development process itself. Functional quality covers the adherence to user requirements, whereas the structural quality addresses the structure of the software product’s source code concerning its maintainability. The process quality is related to the reliability and predictability of the development process. The software quality model is applied in a business context by collecting the data for the software metrics in the model. To evaluate the software quality model we analyze the data and present it to the people involved in the agile software development process. The results from the application and the user feedback suggest that the model enables a fair assessment of the software quality and that it can be used to support the continuous improvement of the development process and software products.
A Hybrid Selection Method of Audio Descriptors for Singer Identification in North Indian Classical Music

Singer identification is most important application of Music information retrieval. The process starts with identifying first the audio descriptors then using these feature vectors as input to further classification using Gaussian Mixture Model or Hidden Markov Model as classifiers to identify the singer. The process becomes chaotic if all audio descriptors are used for finding the feature vector, instead if the audio descriptors are selected with respect to the application then the process becomes comparatively simple. In this paper we propose a Hybrid method of selecting correct audio descriptors for the identification of singer of North Indian Classical Music. First only strong (primary) audio descriptors are released on the system in forward pass and the classification impact is to be recorded. Then only selecting the top few audio descriptors having largest impact on the singer identification process are selected and rest are eliminated in the backward pass. Then selecting and releasing all the less significant audio descriptors from the groups that had maximum impact on singer identification process increases the success of correctly identifying the singer. The method reduces substantially the large number of audio descriptors to few, important audio descriptors. The selected audio descriptors are then fed as input to further classifiers.
Childhood overweight: parents in control? : on the influence of parents in maintaining children's weight problems

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Emergent Marketing Strategies and Performance: The Effects of Market Uncertainty and Strategic Feedback Systems

Although many process‐based studies appear in the strategic management literature, little attention has been devoted to the formation process of marketing strategies. Drawing on enactment and information‐processing theories, this study views the external environment as a source of information (i.e. enacted) and organizations as information‐processing entities. We propose a conceptual framework of antecedents and market performance consequences of emergent marketing strategies and test it with a sample of 214 UK enterprises. The results suggest that dimensions of market uncertainty (i.e. dynamism and complexity) and strategic feedback systems influence the formation of emergent marketing strategy. Furthermore, the data reveal that market uncertainty aspects condition the association between emergent marketing strategies and market performance in different ways. These findings provide new insights into how emergent marketing strategies evolve and influence organizational outcomes.
An empirical test of the model on managing the localization of human resources in the People's Republic of China

The localization of human resources has been a major objective for many transnational corporations (TNCs) in the People's Republic of China (PRC). After a review of related literature and in-depth interviews with six TNCs, Wong and Law (1999) developed a model explaining the localization process in the PRC. Based on this localization model, this study empirically tested the antecedents of successful localization results of 139 TNCs in the People's Republic of China. Results showed that, (1) whether or not localization had been identified as an important goal, (2) overall localization planning efforts and (3) actual human resources management practices were important factors leading to successful localization of expatriate positions. Implications of the results are discussed.