Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EMU: will it fly?

• n December 1991, the leaders of the member states of the European Union ~ met in Maastricht, the Netherlands, to conclude the negotiations on a Treaty on European Union. The Maastricht Treaty as it is commonly known, encompasses a wide range of issues, from foreign affairs and security policy to citizenship, health and tourism. Primarily, however, the Maastricht Treaty is known for formalizing the intentions of the member states of the European Union to create an economic and monetary union (EMU) by the end of this century. The main features of EMU are the creation of a single monetary policymaking body and a single currency for the European Union. While EMU seemed certain in December 1991, within a year the outlook had turned much bleaker. In a referendum injune 1992, Danish voters rejected the treaty This was followed by a series of exchange rate crises affecting the European Union in 1992 and 1993. Despite these setbacks, the Maastricht Treaty was ultimately approved by all member states (a second referendum passed in Denmark in 1993) and the treaty entered into force on November 1. 1993. In accordance with the treaty the European Union is laying the groundwork for monetary union: creating the institutions and studying the technical details necessary to meld as many as 14 independent monetary policymaking bodies into one cohesive systetn) Furthermore, to make themselves eligible for entry into EMU, countries are undertaking policies aimed at achieving economic convergence across the European Union. This economic conversion is seen as an integral part of the process toward monetary union. Indeed, the Maastricht Treaty is based on the idea that economic convergence is a prerequisite for monetary union. The treaty creates a series of criteria which countries mnst meet to join the monetary union. These criteria are designed to ensure that potential entrants share a commitment to that union. Much has been written critiquing the usefulness of economic convergence prior to monetary union.2 Some papers, such as Dc Grauwe (1994), focus on whether the convergence indicators detailed in the treaty are the proper indicators to ensure a well-functioning monetary union. This article does not enter this discussion; rather, given the criteria established by the Maastricht Treaty, it assesses the progress of the members of the European Union in meeting these criteria. After illustrating the lack of progress of the EU in tneeting them, I consider the two main alternatives available to the member states that hope to achieve monetary union in the near future. One is to allow latitude in the application of the convergence criteria and the other is to view the starting date for monetary union as flexible.
Productivity Measurement and the Relationship between Plant Performance and JIT Intensity

The management accounting and operations management literatures argue that the adoption of advanced manufacturing practices, such as JIT, necessitates complementary changes in the firm's Management Accounting and Control Systems. This study uses a sample of JIT and non-JIT plants operating in the Canadian automotive parts manufacturing industry to study the interaction between performance outcomes, intensity of JIT practices and productivity measurement. This study provides evidence that productivity measurement mediates the relationship between performance outcomes and intensity of JIT practices. Specifically, both JIT and non-JIT plants that use a broader range of productivity measures are more efficient and profitable. Also, plants that employ industry driven productivity measures are more profitable and efficient relative to plants that employ idiosyncratic productivity measures, especially if the former are more JIT intensive. Furthermore, plants that employ quality productivity measures are less efficient and less profitable, especially if they use more intensive JIT practices. The latter result is consistent with JIT intensive plants over-investing in quality. This study also finds that plants that invest more in buffer stock are less efficient and less profitable, especially if they use more intensive JIT practices. Despite the fact that plant profitability and efficiency are highly correlated, JIT intensive plants are more profitable but less efficient relative to plants that are not JIT intensive, after controlling for productivity measures, plant size and buffer stock. This result suggests that despite wasting resources, JIT intensive plants are still able to generate superior profits relative to plants that are not JIT intensive.
Trust in food safety in Russia, Denmark and Norway

In this paper we argue that institutional conditions should be taken into consideration when consumers trust in food safety is analysed. Our survey results demonstrate that levels of trust in food safety varies considerably across our three selected countries: Russian consumers expressing the lowest level of trust, Norwegian consumers the highest and Danish consumers expressing levels of trust in food safety which were in between. We find empirical evidence in all countries that consumers trust in food safety is related to their evaluation of how their national food control authorities perform, as well as to what extend they trust market mechanisms to secure food quality. However, while trust in food safety in the Scandinavian countries is more likely to rest on trust in public food control, trust in food safety more often depend on trust in market mechanisms in the St. Petersburg region.
Modeling Chronic Glycemic Exposure Variables as Correlates and Predictors of Microvascular Complications of Diabetes

We read with interest the article by Dyck et al. (1), in which the authors described a chronic glycemic exposure variable (GEi) in the Rochester Study. They examined GEi and its individual components (A1C, duration, and age at onset) in terms of prediction/correlation with complications and concluded that GEi is generally predicted better than its individual components (see Table 3 of ref. 1). Dyck et al. compared their results with our previously published analyses (2) using a different chronic glycemic exposure variable, A1 months, noting …
2004 SPRING MEETING OF THE WPSA UK BRANCH POSTERS

proactive copers, Verbeek et al., 1996). The predictions from coping theory is that the featherpeckers (proactive copers) should have a shorter attack latency in the aggression test, and show a faster approach and faster habituation in the novel object test. In this experiment featherpeckers were adult animals that showed severe feather pecking (n1⁄4 21). The birds were selected from 12 groups of 10 birds. We used non-feather pecking individuals from the same groups as the controls (n1⁄421). The non-featherpeckers showed less fear reactions to the mirror and were closer to it (chisq1⁄4 3.37; P1⁄4 0.07), but there was no significant difference in the number of agonistic behaviours performed. In the novel object test there was no difference in the latency to approach the novel object but non-featherpeckers showed a more rapid habituation (chisq1⁄4 3.70; P1⁄4 0.05). The same aggression and novel object tests were repeated on 20 birds from a line selected for high feather pecking, and 20 from a line of low featherpeckers. The feather pecking lines had been selected on the basis of bouts of feather pecking. The birds from the high feather pecking line were more aggressive than the birds from the low feather pecking line, showing more aggressive hopping, pecking and kicking (chisq1⁄4 9.76; P1⁄4 0.0016; chisq1⁄4 4.32; P1⁄4 0.0376; chisq1⁄4 5.54; P1⁄4 0.0186). The birds from the high feather pecking line came closer to the novel object (chisq1⁄4 10.28; P1⁄4 0.0013), but there was no difference in habituation between the birds from the two lines. We thus found very different behavioural patterns, depending on whether the birds investigated came from lines differing in gentle feather pecking or from birds selected on the basis of severe feather pecking. While the results from the selection lines are in accordance with what can be expected from coping theory the results from the birds that show severe feather pecking are not, and are even in some cases opposite to these predictions. The previous results reported suggesting that featherpeckers are active copers have come from studies on lines selected for and against feather pecking (Korte et al., 1997, van Hierden et al., 2002). It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that the main problem in commercial settings is caused by severe and not gentle feather pecking. The present findings therefore suggest that we should not look to coping theory to find the mechanism that lies behind the problems seen in industry.
The Economics of Banking

Preface. Chapter 1. Trends in Domestic and International Banking. Chapter 2. Financial Intermediation: The Impact of the Capital Market. Chapter 3. Banks and Financial Intermediation. Chapter 4. Banking Typology. Chapter 5. International Banking. Chapter 6. The Theory of the Banking Firm. Chapter 7. Models of Banking Behaviour. Chapter 8. Credit Rationing. Chapter 9. Securitization. Chapter 10. Banking Efficiency and the Structure of Banking. Chapter 11. Banking Competition. Chapter 12. Bank Regulation. Chapter 13. Risk Management. Chapter 14. The Macroeconomics of Banking. References. Index.
The causal effect of coalition governments on fiscal policies: evidence from a Regression Kink Design

Proportional election systems are widespread across countries and often lead to coalition governments. This creates interest in how the form of government (single-party or coalition governments) causally influences fiscal policies. It is difficult to estimate this causal effect empirically because the form of government is not randomly assigned to political units. I overcome this problem by using a Regression Kink Design which exploits that there is a slope change in the treatment probability at the 50% vote share of the strongest party. This method is applied to a large panel data set of German local governments. I find that contrary to the theoretical prediction, coalition governments significantly decrease expenditures.
TimeTubes: visual fusion and validation for ameliorating uncertainties of blazar datasets from different observatories

Astronomers have been observing blazars to solve the mystery of the relativistic jet. A technique called TimeTubes uses a 3D volumetric tube to visualize the time-dependent multivariate observed datasets and allows astronomers to interactively analyze the dynamic behavior of and relationship among those variables. However, the observed datasets themselves exhibit uncertainty due to their errors and missing periods, whereas periods interpolated by TimeTubes result in a different type of uncertainty. In this paper, we present a technique for ameliorating such data- and mapping-inherent uncertainties: visual fusion of datasets for the same blazar from two different observatories. Visual data fusion with Time-Tubes enables astronomers to validate the datasets in a meticulous manner.
Multicast fast re-route schemes for multiflow case

Schemes for protection of a node, a link and a rout under fault-tolerant multicast routing are presented for a multiflow case. The schemes are based on a nonlinear flow model which has the conditions for preventing links overload modified for a case when not all flows can switch to backup routs but only some of them. Scheme operability is demonstrated on a numerical example which has proven effectiveness of the proposed solution for the multiflow case.
Fertilizer use and maize production in Sub-Saharan Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, greater use of mineral fertilizers is crucial to increasing food production and slowing the rate of environmental degradation. Regional growth rates in fertilizer consumption have never been particularly high, in part because the real price of fertilizer is higher in Africa than in many other developing regions. As subsidies have been removed and exchange-rate distortions corrected over the past decade or more, relative prices paid by farmers have risen to reflect more closely the economic cost of fertilizer. Consumption growth has thus slowed even more. Nonetheless, during the period of declining growth in consumption, fertilizer use on cereals, particularly maize, has become relatively more important than use on cash crops. Strategies for increasing fertilizer use should thus direct more attention to maize and other important staples. In higher potential areas, some fertilizer use on maize is often economically profitable even at higher relative prices of fertilizer. Additional research on the limiting nutrient under farmers' conditions or on the interactions between nutrients and other crop-management factors could help to increase profitability. Policy analysis for Africa's fertilizer sector has tended to focus on subsidies and to neglect other important issues, such as solving credit problems at many points in the marketing channel, supporting appropriate agricultural research, and developing and maintaining infrastructure. Agricultural sector strategies that give sufficient attention to these issues must be developed. Although subsidy removal must be one ultimate policy objective, we recommend gradual withdrawal in countries where fertilizer consumption levels are relatively high. Because many African governments require time and stability to develop policy capacity, detailed institutional analyses can help design second-best solutions to problems of fertilizer policy.
The impact of public capital and public investment on economic growth: an empirical investigation

in this anicle we measure the impact of public sector capital and investment on economic growth. Initially, traditional growth accounting regressions are run for a cross-country data set. A simple endogenous growth model is then constructed in order to take into account the determinants of labor, private capital and public capital. In both cases, public capital is a separate argument of the production function. An additional data-set constructed with quarterly American data was used in the estimations of the growth mode! The results indicate lhat public capital and public investment play a significant role in determining growth rates and have a significant impact on capital and labor returns. Furthermore, the impact of public investment on productivity growth was found to be positive and always significant for bolh samples. Hence. in a fully optimizing modelo we confmn previous results in the literature that lhe failure of public investment to keep pace with output growlh during the Seventies and Eighties may have played a major role in the slowdown of lhe productivity growth in the period. Anolher main outcome concems the output elasticity wilh respect to public capital. The coefficiem estimates are always positive and significant but magnitudes depend on each of lhe two data set used.
Optimal LSP capacity and flow assignment using traffic engineering in MPLS networks

Quality of service (QoS) and traffic engineering (TE) capabilities are two important criteria in today's networks for supporting real-time applications. Multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) plays a key role in IP networks by providing QoS and TE features. In this paper, we first propose an analytical label switched path (LSP) model associated with the TE issue that assumes two different LSP transmission mechanisms: layer 2 cut-through switching and layer 3 default routing. Secondly, we propose a new LSP traffic flow distribution optimization objective function to minimize the overall network transmission delay. The simulation results show that the proposed model minimizes the overall delay and distributes the traffic on each link evenly. In other words, the connection-oriented forwarding characteristics of layer 2 switching technology are achieved in the proposed model and the incorporated objective function while retaining the equally desirable flexibility and scalability of layer 3 routing.
Sources of public service improvement: a critical review and research agenda

Evidence from sixty-five empirical studies of public service performance is critically reviewed. The statistical results are grouped on the basis of five theoretical perspectives: resources, regulation, markets, organization, and management. The analysis suggests that the most likely sources of service improvement are extra resources and better management. A research agenda for further work is identified, and recommendations are made to enhance the theoretical and methodological quality of studies of public service improvement.
On the Advantage of Quantity Leadership When Outsourcing Production to a Competitive Contract Manufacturer

This study investigates a supply chain comprising an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a contract manufacturer (CM), in which the CM acts as both upstream partner and downstream competitor to the OEM. The two parties can engage in one of three Cournot competition games: a simultaneous game, a sequential game with the OEM as the Stackelberg leader, and a sequential game with the CM as the Stackelberg leader. On the basis of these three basic games, this study investigates the two parties' Stackelberg leadership/followership decisions. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are exogenously given, either party may prefer Stackelberg leadership or followership. For example, when the wholesale price or the proportion of production outsourced to the CM is lower than a threshold value, both parties prefer Stackelberg leadership and, consequently, play a simultaneous game in the consumer market. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are decision variables, the competitive CM sets a wholesale price sufficiently low to allow both parties to coexist in the market, and the OEM outsources its entire production to this CM. This study also examines the impact of the supply chain parties' bargaining power on contract outcomes by considering a wholesale price that is determined via the generalized Nash bargaining scheme, finding a Stackelberg equilibrium to be sustained when the CM's degree of bargaining power is great and the non-competitive CM's wholesale price is high.
Auction Hero: The Design of a Game to Learn and Teach about Computer Security

Although computer security is a concern for online users, many have difficulty making effective security decisions. Auction Hero is a simulation game modeling life online that aims to improve users’ mental models of computer security and help users make more secure decisions. It attempts to simulate real life by making security a secondary consideration that requires vigilance but that may not always be the user’s main priority. We present our design, the first prototype of the game, and the results of a cognitive walkthrough evaluation.
The Role of Large Producers in Industrial Districts: A Case Study of High Technology Systems Houses in Southern California

SCOTT A. J. (1992) The role of large producers in industrial districts: a case study of high technology systems houses in Southern California, Reg. Studies 26, 265–275. A generalized concept of industrial districts is proposed. The concept hinges on the intertwined notions of the social division of labour, external economies and locational agglomeration. It is argued that large production units often play an important part in sustaining the growth and development of industrial districts and that such districts need not be composed solely of small production units. The argument is illustrated by means of a case study of the role of large systems houses within the high technology industrial districts of Southern California. It is concluded that neither large establishments nor the internationalization of the economy necessarily threaten the continued viability of industrial districts. It is also suggested that industrial districts represent a very widely developed phenomenon in time and space. SCOTT A. J. (.
Heterogeneity of a Fluorescent Tegument Component in Single Pseudorabies Virus Virions and Enveloped Axonal Assemblies

ABSTRACT The molecular mechanisms responsible for long-distance, directional spread of alphaherpesvirus infections via axons of infected neurons are poorly understood. We describe the use of red and green fluorescent protein (GFP) fusions to capsid and tegument components, respectively, to visualize purified, single extracellular virions and axonal assemblies after pseudorabies virus (PRV) infection of cultured neurons. We observed heterogeneity in GFP fluorescence when GFP was fused to the tegument component VP22 in both single extracellular virions and discrete puncta in infected axons. This heterogeneity was observed in the presence or absence of a capsid structure detected by a fusion of monomeric red fluorescent protein to VP26. The similarity of the heterogeneous distribution of these fluorescent protein fusions in both purified virions and in axons suggested that tegument-capsid assembly and axonal targeting of viral components are linked. One possibility was that the assembly of extracellular and axonal particles containing the dually fluorescent fusion proteins occurred by the same process in the cell body. We tested this hypothesis by treating infected cultured neurons with brefeldin A, a potent inhibitor of herpesvirus maturation and secretion. Brefeldin A treatment disrupted the neuronal secretory pathway, affected fluorescent capsid and tegument transport in the cell body, and blocked subsequent entry into axons of capsid and tegument proteins. Electron microscopy demonstrated that in the absence of brefeldin A treatment, enveloped capsids entered axons, but in the presence of the inhibitor, unenveloped capsids accumulated in the cell body. These results support an assembly process in which PRV capsids acquire a membrane in the cell body prior to axonal entry and subsequent transport.
Cortisol and Alzheimer's disease, I: Basal studies.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease and nondemented elderly control subjects participated in studies of cortisol secretion during sleep and at 9:00 a.m. and were given dexamethasone suppression tests (DSTs) and lumbar punctures. Nocturnal and 9:00 a.m. cortisol concentrations were significantly higher in the demented patients. CSF MHPG negatively correlated with mean nocturnal cortisol. The most severely demented patients had the highest 9:00 a.m. and mean nocturnal cortisol concentrations. DST results did not distinguish samples with substantially different nocturnal cortisol concentrations. These results suggest that measurements of basal plasma cortisol concentrations and dexamethasone suppression provide different information but support the notion of somewhat higher than normal cortisol concentrations in Alzheimer's disease patients.
Environmental human resource management and competitive advantage

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating effect of environmental human resource management on the relationship between firms' environmental management practices and competitive advantages of cost and differentiation.Design/methodology/approach – CEOs of Spanish chemical firms were asked to respond to a questionnaire containing the measures of the study variables. The final sample consists of 94 firms and the hypotheses were tested using partial least square methodology.Findings – Empirical evidence showed that companies with a high level of human resource environmental practices can benefit from the advantages in costs and differentiation derived from the implementation of pollution prevention technologies.Originality/value – From a theoretical standpoint, the paper discusses the moderating role of environmental human resource management practices in the relationship between pollution prevention technologies and economic performance. Empirically, it provides evidence of the role of.