Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Regulation and private participation in the water and sanitation sector

Private-sector participation is widely perceived to be the solution to the failure of many publicly owned and managed water utilities to operate efficiently and make the investments required to meet community needs. However, there are no guarantees that privatisation will actually yield the desired performance improvements. Simply converting a public-sector monopoly into a private one provides no competitive incentives for the utility to operate efficiently, make appropriate investments or respond to consumer demands. Likewise, privatisation per se need do little to improve sector performance if governments are unwilling or unable to tackle such underlying problems as overmanning, uneconomic water pricing policies, financing the provision of public and merit goods, and restricting over-intrusive political intervention. Given the characteristics of the water and sanitation sector it is inevitable that some form of continued public regulation of the private companies will be necessary. The regulatory burden can be reduced by adopting a competitive form of privatisation, choosing a more competitive sector structure and devising an appropriate regulatory regime. However, it has to be recognised that there will be a trade-off between making a venture attractive to private firms and introducing a notionally ‘ideal’ regulatory system. Regulation, in practice, is as much about creating the conditions under which private firms can operate effectively and efficiently as it is about protecting specific customer and public interests.
Dilemmas in linking succession planning to individual executive learning

This paper examines the issue of linking the selection of top-level executives with the development of these people. It first describes three stages in an organization's development of a succession system which promotes the attainment of a firm's objectives: 1) oneposition staffing, 2) replacement planning, and 3) succession planning. Then we examine the other piece to be connected to succession planning: executive learning. It is argued that most planned executive development is aimed at task learning, not personal learning. Consistent with this condition, most executive education activities overstress classroomstyle receptive methods, while neglecting active learning. Reasons for this state of affairs are proposed. The paper concludes with recommendations for enhancing personal learning for executives and for better integrating this learning with the strategic succession planning of the organization. This sort of strategic approach to executive succession is seen as the “acid test” in a firm's strategic planning process.
Is there a Case for Price-level Targeting?

There is a case, but there are also counter-arguments. With sufficient forward-looking behaviour among firms and households, price-level targeting can act as a powerful built-in stabiliser through automatic shifts in inflation expectations. This stabilisation mechanism reduces the need for large shifts in policy rates, alleviating the risk of hitting the zero lower bound of nominal interest rates and falling into a liquidity trap. Furthermore, credible price-level targeting can support capital accumulation by protecting the long-run purchasing power of money and reducing the inflation risk premium embedded in actual long-term real interest rates. However, price-level targeting can imply welfare-reducing policy-induced output volatility in situations where the degree of forward-looking behaviour is very low. The self-regulating capacity of price-level targeting can be undermined if central banks are not fully credible. Besides, aggressive inflation targeting can replicate some of (but not all) the benefits of price-level targeting. On balance, the case for adopting price-level targeting is not clear-cut, all the more so since transition costs are likely to be significant. Y a-t-il beaucoup a dire en faveur du ciblage du niveau des prix ? Oui, mais il y a aussi de serieux contre-arguments. Si une part suffisante des entreprises et des menages presente un comportement tourne vers l’avenir, le ciblage du niveau des prix peut fonctionner comme un puissant outil de stabilisation autonome grâce aux ajustements automatiques des anticipations des inflations. Ce mecanisme limite le besoin d’operer de larges mouvements des taux directeurs, ce qui reduit le risque de heurter la borne zero sur les taux d’interet et de tomber dans une trappe a liquidites. Qui plus est, grâce a la maniere dont elle protege le pouvoir d’achat de la monnaie, une politique credible de ciblage du niveau des prix peut encourager l’accumulation de capital en reduisant la prime contre le risque d’inflation qui est incorporee aux taux d’interets reels effectifs. Neanmoins, le ciblage du niveau des prix peut entrainer une volatilite de l’activite prejudiciable au bien-etre social si la part des menages et des entreprises qui sont tournes vers l’avenir est tres faible. La capacite de stabilisation automatique d’un regime de ciblage du niveau des prix peut aussi etre moindrie si la banque centrale manque de credibilite. Par ailleurs, une strategie de ciblage agressif du taux d’inflation peut reproduire une partie (mais non pas l’ensemble) des avantages du ciblage du niveau des prix. Tout bien pese, les arguments en faveur du ciblage du niveau des prix ne justifient pas de maniere nette un changement de strategie monetaire, d’autant plus que les couts de transition risquent d’etre eleves.
Association Between Accounting Conservatism and Analysts’ Forecast Inefficiency*

We find that analysts’ earnings forecasts do not fully impound the implications of accounting conservatism. Forecast optimism is negatively associated with the magnitude of beginning-of-year balance sheet reserves (BSR), which are associated with conservative accounting in prior years. However this result vanishes once we allow for the negative association, documented in a number of prior studies, between BSR and Basu’s (1997) asymmetric timeliness (AT) measure of conservatism. After controlling for this association, we find that forecasters’ under-reaction to bad vs. good news is negatively associated with the magnitude of BSR. We obtain similar results after allowing for the positive association between AT and Khan and Watts’ (2009) C_Score, which has been documented only recently. Our results are thus consistent with a subtle form of inefficiency of forecasts with respect to accounting conservatism, viz., analysts do not fully appreciate that the earnings of companies with lower BSR or higher C_Score are likely to be both (a) lower relative to forecast and (b) more asymmetrically timely than the earnings of companies exhibiting higher BSR or lower C_Score.
The Analytics of the Pricing of Higher Education and Other Services in Which the Customers Are Inputs

Many services provide outputs that depend partially on the customers as inputs; the presence of other customers often contributes to the output experienced by each purchaser. Higher education is the premier example; others are legion. We provide a simple model that addresses the questions of competitive pricing and allocative efficiency for these types of services. Prices that charge customers for what they get on net (output minus input) from the firm both are competitive and support efficient allocations; these prices internalize the apparent external effects of customers on each other. Few examples of such prices exist in the real world.
Hereditäre nicht-polypöse kolorektale Karzinome

Familial clustering is found in 20-25% of all cases with colorectal cancer (CRC), 4-5% revealing autosomal dominant inheritance. Hereditary CRC develops from adenomatous, hyperplastic hamartomatous juvenile lesions. Hereditory nonpolyposis colorectal cancer includes two genetically different tumor entities, those with and without microsatellite instability in the corresponding tumors. Those with such instability and with germ-line mutation in DNA mismatch repair genes (Lynch syndrome) have additional neoplasms, an earlier age at onset and a higher risk for syn- and metachronous cancers.
Postischemic Reperfusion: Ultrastructural Blood-Brain Barrier and Hemodynamic Correlative Changes in an Awake Model of Transient Forebrain Ischemia

OBJECTIVE:In nonrecovery models of cerebral ischemia, blood-brain barrier (BBB) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes are known to occur during reperfusion. It is unknown, however, whether those CBF and BBB alterations occur after brief, transient ischemia with neurological recovery. The purpose of this study was to characterize the time course of CBF and BBB ultrastructural changes during reperfusion in an awake, recovery model of transient global forebrain ischemia (GFI). METHODS:Forty-five adult Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected, while awake, to 10 minutes of GFI by the nine-vessel occlusion method. Thirty-five age-matched animals composed a sham-operated group. Normal control (n = 5), sham-operated (n = 5), and nine-vessel occlusion/reperfusion (n = 15) rats were selected for ultrastructural analysis. Electroencephalography was performed, and CBF, mean arterial blood pressure, and intracranial pressure were measured during ischemia and reperfusion up to 24 hours. Quantitative morphological analysis of cortical BBB capillaries was performed by transmission electron microscopy at the same time points at which specific CBF changes occurred during reperfusion. RESULTS:CBF decreased to 6% of preocclusion values during GFI. This correlated with coma and decerebrate rigidity. During reperfusion, short-lived hyperemia (225 ± 18%, P < 0.001) was characterized by increased intracranial pressure (28.3 ± 2.6 mm Hg, P < 0.001) and isoelectric electroencephalogram. This was followed by hypoperfusion, which reached a nadir of 59.7% (59.7 ± 8.8%, P < 0.01) from baseline by 90 minutes. At this time point, the electroencephalogram recovered, and intracranial pressure and mean arterial blood pressure showed no abnormalities. By 8.5 hours, CBF returned to normal, and this coincided with complete recovery of the animal. Ultrastructural BBB analysis revealed astrocyte end-foot process edema and patent capillaries during hyperemia. Severe interstitial BBB edema and capillary lumen collapse was observed during hypoperfusion. Detachment and migration of pericytes was observed during hypoperfusion and beyond. CONCLUSION:A biphasic CBF response is elicited during reperfusion after brief nonlethal GFI under awake conditions.
Consecutive group paging for LTE networks supporting machine-type communications services

Group paging is one of the mechanisms proposed to resolve the radio access network (RAN) overload problem resulted from simultaneous channel access from huge machine devices [1]. This paper presents a consecutive group paging to enhance the performance of group paging. In consecutive group paging, the base station reserves multiple paging cycles to page the same group of users consecutively such that UEs which failed in the earlier paging cycles can perform random-access procedure again in the later paging cycles. We utilize the analytical model presented in [2] to derive the performance metrics of consecutive group paging. The optimal group size, total number of reserved radio resource and the maximum number of preamble transmission are derived for each value of paging cycle threshold. The accuracy of the proposed analytical model is verified via computer simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed consecutive group paging enhances the performance of group paging.
On Business Cycle Models and their Extensions to Endogenous Growth Theory

This paper surveys a selected literature covering cyclical fluctuations, endogenous growth and the interrelation of volatility and growth. After reviewing models of the business cycle - in particular the standard RBC model and its various extensions toward the state-of-the-art New Keynesian DSGE model - we relate this literature to the endogenous growth theory. We give an overview of recent work combining elements of both, business cycle theory and growth theory investigating the correlation between economic growth and cyclical fluctuations as well as the implications for macroeconomic stabilization policy.
Dünya'da ve Türkiye'de Hizmetiçi Eğitimler: Kurumsal ve Akademik Hafıza(Kayıpları)mız

By examining the history of national and international in-service teacher education literature, policies, trends, and developments, this paper aims to highlight Turkish institutional and academic memories and the memory that has been lost. Adopting qualitative methodology through context and historical review approaches, policy documents, research articles, official newspapers and websites, and congress minutes were analyzed. The findings indicated that, in an international setting, in-service teacher training has been developed by establishing an understanding and creating memories through implementations, experiences and findings from research. On the other hand, in the Turkish setting in-service teacher training is influenced by changing regulations, personal bureaucratic decisions and fundamental reform movements, which fail to consider the research findings.
Stock Market and Agricultural Futures Diversification: An International Perspective

Academic and practitioner research has presented strong evidence in support of the addition of commodity futures contracts to a diversified stock portfolio to enhance the risk-return characteristics of the portfolio. Moreover, it is well documented that diversification among risky assets in a particular country leads to risk reduction, but the potential gains are limited due to high correlations within an economy. Therefore, international portfolio diversification, primarily in stocks and bonds, has been advocated as a way of enhancing average returns while reducing portfolio risk for an investor who may consider holding foreign securities. This article expands on this initial conjecture by adding foreign agricultural futures contracts to the international dimension. The findings lend support to the arguments in favor of international diversification of agricultural commodities and present results on the long-term, historical risks and returns of agri-commodity futures and their relationship to the risks of other equity assets. Furthermore, since correlation stability is crucial to the size of the potential benefits from such diversification, additional insights into the inter-temporal stability of international return correlations are discussed.
Unsupervised QoE field study for mobile YouTube video streaming with YoMoApp

YoMoApp (YouTube Monitoring App) is an Android app to monitor mobile YouTube video streaming on both application- and network-layer. Additionally, it allows to collect subjective Quality of Experience (QoE) feedback of end users. During the development of the app, the stable versions of YoMoApp were already available in the Google Play Store, and the app was downloaded, installed, and used on many devices to monitor streaming sessions. As the app was not advertised in special campaigns or used for dedicated QoE studies, the monitored streaming sessions of this period compose the data set of a large unsupervised field study. The collected data set is evaluated to characterize current mobile YouTube streaming on both application and network layers. Furthermore, the problems and methodology to obtain QoE results from such unsupervised field study are discussed together with the actual QoE results. Correlations between QoE factors are investigated, and the QoE of clusters of similar streaming sessions is analyzed.
The Impact of Global Warming on Agriculture: A Ricardian Analysis: Reply

The authors measure the economic impact of climate on land prices. Using cross-sectional data on climate, farmland prices, and other economic and geophysical data for almost 3,000 counties in the United States, they find that higher temperatures in all seasons except autumn reduce average farm values, while more precipitation outside of autumn increases farm values. Applying the model to a global-warming scenario shows a significantly lower estimated impact of global warming on U.S. agriculture than the traditional production-function approach and, in one case, suggests that, even without carbon dioxide fertilization, global warming may have economic benefits for agriculture. Copyright 1994 by American Economic Association.
Behavioural Microsimulation with Labour Supply Responses

This paper provides a technical survey of recent developments in behavioural microsimulation. We discuss the criteria by which models of labour supply may be chosen for application to behavioural microsimulation, and consider how such models may be augmented to control for fixed costs, child-related work costs, preference heterogeneity and endogeneity in wages. We describe methods by which non-linear budget constraints may be accommodated in estimation, policy simulations and welfare analysis, and discuss how stochastic terms may be factored into the simulation of behavioural responses to a policy shock. Copyright 2002 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd
Persistent body image disturbance following recovery from eating disorders.

OBJECTIVE Individuals with an eating disorder experience the rubber hand illusion (RHI) significantly more strongly than healthy controls on both perceptual (proprioceptive drift) and subjective (self-report embodiment questionnaire) measures. This heightened sensitivity to visual information about the body, and/or reduced somatosensory information processing about the body, suggest an increased malleability of the bodily self. The aim of the present study was to explore whether this is a state phenomenon or a persisting individual trait that outlasts the period of acute eating disorder. METHOD The RHI and self-report measures of eating disorder psychopathology (EDI-3 subscales of Drive for Thinness, Bulimia, Body Dissatisfaction, Interoceptive Deficits, and Emotional Dysregulation; DASS-21; and the Self-Objectification Questionnaire) were administered to 78 individuals with an eating disorder, 28 individuals recovered from an eating disorder, and 61 healthy controls. RESULTS Proprioceptive drift in recovered individuals was intermediate between the acutely ill and HC groups. Subjective report of the strength of the illusion in recovered individuals was similar to acutely ill individuals. DISCUSSION These results suggest that increased malleability of the bodily self persists, at least partially, following recovery and may be a trait phenomenon in people with eating disorders. Those with a lifetime history of an eating disorder may have heightened sensitivity to visual information about the body and reduced somatosensory information processing of the body.
Estimating Benefits and Costs of Casino Gambling in Iowa, United States

This study estimates benefits and costs of casino gambling in the state of Iowa. The results indicate that the combined economic impacts of gambling and its ancillary activities are positive overall for Iowa. The measurable benefit–cost ratio for the state is estimated to be between 1.78:1 and 3.18:1. While the majority of Iowans participate responsibly in casino gambling, this study enumerates a prevalence rate of at-risk, problem, and pathological gamblers combined to be between 7.3% and 8.4% of the adult population. This percentage transforms to significant cost approximations. This study further reveals that statewide computation of net benefits is not universal. The differing benefit–cost ratios across casino counties show that not every region is situated to benefit from gambling. Several factors, such as location, resort nature of the casino facility, monopolistic situations, and competitors from out-of-state need to be taken into consideration to understand the benefit–cost dynamics of casino gambling and the viability of future expansion.
Incentives from exchange rate regimes in an institutional context

An open economy macromodel, calibrated to typical institutions and shocks of a populous emerging market economy, shows that a monetary stimulus preceding a supply shock can abort inflation at minimum output cost, since of the appreciation of exchange rates, accompanying a fall in interest rates and rise in output. Analytic results obtained for two periods are generalized through simulations and validated through estimation. One instrument achieves both domestic output and exchange rate objectives, partly since it creates correct incentives for foreign exchange traders. Strategic interactions imply supporting institutions are required to coordinate monetary, fiscal policy, and markets to the optimal equilibrium.
Dietary and Medical Management of Short Bowel Syndrome In Adult Patients

Resection of the small bowel can lead to malabsorption of fluid, electrolytes, minerals, and other essential nutrients, resulting in malnutrition and dehydration. Individualized and tailored nutritional management for patients with short bowel syndrome (SBS) helps to optimize intestinal absorption, leading to nutritional independence such that a patient can resume as normal a lifestyle as possible. Parenteral nutrition (PN), used to supply the required nutrients following resection, is associated with a number of complications affecting patient morbidity and mortality. Attempts should be made to wean patients from PN to an oral diet as soon as possible. Dietary management is complex and needs to be individualized for each patient on the basis of his or her specific gastrointestinal anatomy, underlying disease, and lifestyle. In addition to nutrient intake, management of SBS also requires appropriate oral rehydration, vitamin and mineral supplementation, and pharmacotherapy. Several medications provide a useful adjunctive function to dietary intervention, including antidiarrheal agents, H2 antagonists and proton pump inhibitors, pancreatic enzymes, somatostatin analogs, antimicrobials, and trophic factors.
An analysis of members' perspectives of service quality in Hong Kong tourist association membership system

Abstract The objectives of the study were (1) to evaluate members' satisfaction and expectation towards the quality of services provided by the HKTA membership system; (2) to identify the performance “gap” between members' satisfaction and expectation in the HKTA membership system; and, (3) to explore the impact of members' satisfaction level in participating in the HKTA membership system. A comprehensive survey was conducted and a Simple Random Sampling plan was used to survey 600 members. It was found that 28 out of 32 attributes had negative performance “gaps. ” The likelihood of participating in HKTA activities was dependant on the members' satisfaction in “Increase social awareness,” “Opportunities to liaise with business associates” and “Upgrading staff through training courses. ” The implications of the findings were discussed and recommendations were proposed.
HRM in project‐intensive firms: Changes and challenges

One of the most profound organizational changes currently under way is the application of project-based structures within and between firms. This change is happening in both growth and mature industries. Several management scholars have taken interest in the reasons why firms adopt project-based ways of working. However, the effect of project-based organizing on the firm's H R M is a recurrent problem and a challenge to many companies. We develop a framework for the analysis of HRM in project-intensive firms. Based on a study of four companies and the transformation of their organizational structures and processes, we identify four managerial issues and a number of questions that must be addressed to improve HRM in project-intensive firms. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.