Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Theory of Out‐of‐Wedlock Childbearing

In 1960, marriage was a virtual precondition for childbearing. By 1997, out‐of‐wedlock births accounted for 26 percent of fertility among whites and 69 percent among blacks. This paper presents a model that integrates economic theories of fertility and marriage to help understand the growth of out‐of‐wedlock childbearing. In the theory, fathers can shift the costs of child rearing to single mothers. If females are in excess supply and have sufficiently high incomes, a marriage market equilibrium may exist in which children are born within marriage to high‐income parents, whereas in low‐income groups men father children by multiple partners outside of marriage.
Earnings Management: A Perspective

Compares three definitions of earnings management used by accounting researchers and three methods of estimating it: aggregate accruals, specific accruals and discontinuities in earnings distribution. Discusses evidence relating to the reasons for income‐increasing earnings management, income‐decreasing earnings management and specific contexts, e.g. financial institutions with regulatory constraints. Concludes that, although the evidence is limited, managers are more likely to manipulate income up rather than down; and identifies some opportunities for further research.
The Impact of Local Government Reforms in Greece:A Critical Overview

By the beginning of the 1980s, an overwhelming majority believed that public administration would become friendlier to the average citizen if a great number of responsibilities would be delegated to the municipalities. Socialist governments (1981-1989) undertook several decentralization reforms, but were hesitated in promoting obligatory amalgamations, although demographic changes and urban pull caused an ongoing depopulation of rural areas, while small municipalities were even unable to fulfill residual tasks. The need for efficiency was the main argument for the "Capodistrias Plan" of amalgamations (1997) that intended to re-structure the first tier and create new, stronger municipalities that would be able to cope with new tasks, promote local development, and offer "modern social services" to their citizens, especially in rural areas. By 2007, former opponents of the reform, namely the conservative leaders, initiated a debate on a second wave of amalgamations, thus implicitly acknowledging the success of territorial reform or at least the positive dynamics of a transformation that had to be completed. A main assumption of this paper is that the organization of sub-national levels of government and governance is the outcome of a political process where the politics of territorial choice are influenced by societal arrangements and dynamics with the balance between different interests being intermediated through political processes. Territorial re-scaling, moreover, is exposed to pressures coming from supranational (European and global) as well as national levels, the outcome being an open game depending on the main features of the socio-economic and political systems in each country.
Russian Federation: From the first to second demographic transition

The demographic transition in Russia was accelerated by several social cataclysms during the "Soviet type" modernization. Frequent changes in the timing of births and marriages engendered a mass "abortion culture". Contraceptive devices of poor quality were produced on a limited scale. The Soviet regime promulgated pronatalism and considered contraception to contradict this ideology. There have been two waves of government policy interventions. In the 1930s and 1940s restrictive and propaganda measures prevailed. These failed to yield serious effects. In the 1980s, policies aimed at lessening the tension between full-time employment and maternal roles. These generated shifts in birth timing, namely shorter birth intervals and earlier second and third births, however increase in completed cohort fertility was minimal. A third wave started in 2007. Preoccupied with continuous depopulation, authorities intend to boost births by substantially increasing benefits. The mid-1990s was a turning point in the change of fertility and nuptiality models. The 1970s birth cohorts marry and become parents later. They delay first and second births and increasingly begin partnerships with cohabitation. Contraception is replacing abortion. New attitudes and perceptions about family, partnership, childbearing, and family planning are emerging. A major transformation typical for developed countries, the Second Demographic Transition, is underway. Nevertheless, many neo-traditional features of fertility and nuptiality remain. These distinguish Russia from most European countries and will persist in the near future. Completed fertility, however, hardly differs from the average European level.
Knowledge-based Integrated Product Development

Integrated Product Development (IPD) is a style of product development where the transfer of knowledge across many disciplines is a key factor. Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) is a tool that helps with the acquisition and use of knowledge in any engineering project. In all factors that contribute to efficiency in IPD, KBE have previously been shown to facilitate these factors individually. It is therefore reasonable to believe that a KBE platform that is fully integrated with the IPD development process can be very successful, and worth further research.
A Conditional Multi-Asset Intertemporal CAPM with Switching Prices of Risk

This paper tests the conditional multi-asset Intertemporal CAPM of Merton (1973). When a single-asset static or Intertemporal CAPM is estimated, the risk-return relation is weak. Inclusion of additional assets inceases the power and efficiency of the test, making the price of market risk positive and significant. The prices of market and intertemporal risk are allowed to vary over time thanks to the regime switching model of Hamilton (1988, 1989, 1990, 1994). Two regimes are identified, one in which the price of market risk is high and the price of intertemporal risk is low, and one in which the reverse occurs, i.e. the first price is high and the second low. This can be interpreted as a switch in investors' preferences whose degree of risk aversion increases in correspondence to or after financial turmoil. Moreover, while stocks appear to be good hedges against business cycle downturns, fixed income securities do not.
Ptex: Per‐Face Texture Mapping for Production Rendering

Explicit parameterization of subdivision surfaces for texture mapping adds significant cost and complexity to film production. Most parameterization methods currently in use require setup effort, and none are completely general. We propose a new texture mapping method for Catmull‐Clark subdivision surfaces that requires no explicit parameterization. Our method, Ptex, stores a separate texture per quad face of the subdivision control mesh, along with a novel per‐face adjacency map, in a single texture file per surface. Ptex uses the adjacency data to perform seamless anisotropic filtering of multi‐resolution textures across surfaces of arbitrary topology. Just as importantly, Ptex requires no manual setup and scales to models of arbitrary mesh complexity and texture detail. Ptex has been successfully used to texture all of the models in an animated theatrical short and is currently being applied to an entire animated feature. Ptex has eliminated UV assignment from our studio and significantly increased the efficiency of our pipeline.
ANALISIS SALURAN PEMASARAN DAN TRANSMISI HARGA TANDAN BUAH SEGAR (TBS) KELAPA SAWIT PADA PETANI SWADAYA DI DESA SARI GALUH KECAMATAN TAPUN KABUPATEN KAMPAR

The purpose of this research is to find out and analyze: channels and marketingmargins of TBS as well as palm oil prices received by Swadaya Farmers; thecorrelation or relationship between the price of oil palm paid PKS with the pricereceived by swadaya farmers and the effect of price (price transmission elasticity)from oil palm at PKS with the price recevied by swadaya farmers at sari galuhvillage, tapung district, kampar subdistrict. This research was conducted from March2012 to August 2012. The method that the reasearch used was survey method. Thesample take used by purposive sampling. The sampling of the reaserch was 42swadaya farmers with the age of palm trees between 8-12 years, whereas fortraders and pks used by method snowball sampling by following marketing chanel.The results of this research show only one market by channel from swadaya farmerstbs, from farmer to traders than to PKS and marketing margins used the periodictime series data from January to December 2011 Rp. 223,12. The price thatreceived by farmer is 85,05%. The correlation value of the price from swadayafarmers with the price PKS was 0,983. The value of the elasticity of pricetransmission between the price received from swadaya farmers and the price of oilpalm by PKS was 0,085. Keywords: Marketing channels, margins, price transmission, swadaya farmers.
The Impact of Whole Faculty Study Groups and Peer Observations on the Professional Learning Community

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Employment and income loss in a Steel City

Abstract Post war economic activity in the Wollongong region has depended largely upon a manufacturing base in general and on the production of iron and steel in particular. The combined effects of recession and restructuring in the steel industry has created severe adjustment problems for the region. This paper examines the impact of recent job loss in the steel and other manufacturing industries upon employment and income within the Wollongong region by the use of a regional input-output table supplemented by survey data.
SVC-aware retransmission scheme in multi-gigabit wireless local area networks

In this paper, we present a scalable video coding (SVC)-aware retransmission scheme in multi-gigabit wireless local area networks. The proposed scheme applies different retransmission policies for base and enhancement layers to minimize the transmission latency while mitigating unnecessary retransmissions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms conventional retransmission schemes.
Evaluaciones de impacto en la cooperación para el desarrollo

Resumen Los disenos experimentales estan actualmente en la frontera metodologica de la evaluacion de impacto y de la economia del desarrollo. Se enfrentan a criticas, algunas generales a toda evaluacion, otras especificas de su diseno aleatorizado. El trabajo senala y discute cuatro de ellas: la necesidad de teoria para disenar creativamente cada evaluacion; el problema de la heterogeneidad; la validez externa; y la traslacion de la evidencia a las politicas publicas. A la luz de la experiencia espanola con el Fondo Espanol de Evaluaciones de Impacto, la principal recomendacion que surge es que las Administraciones Publicas, deben tener conocimiento de las potencialidades y limitaciones de la amplia gama de evaluaciones de impacto para apoyar su ejecucion cuando sea oportuno y para ajustar la pregunta evaluativa que encarguen a las condiciones de rigor, tiempo, presupuesto y utilidad de la informacion que recibiran de cara a tomar una decision politica. Abstract Experimental designs are currently in the methodological frontier of impact assessment and development economics. The methodology has received some criticisms: some of them are applied to any type of evaluation while others are specific to their randomized design. The paper points out and discusses four of them: the need for theory to design creatively each evaluation; the problem of heterogeneity; external validity; and the translation of evidence into public policy. In light of the Spanish experience with the Spanish Impact Evaluation Fund, the main recommendation that emerges from the analysis is that policy makers should be aware of the potential and limitations of the wide range of impact assessments, to support their implementation when appropriate and to adjust the inquiry to the necessary accuracy, time, budget constraints and to the utility of the information they receive in order to take a political decision.
Competitive advantage in global industries

Attempts to define competitive advantage within an industry. Identifies the need for a competitive strategy specific to the enterprise and industry concerned. Considers the structure of the industry, the scope of profitability and positioning of the company. Looks at competitive advantage within global industries in relation to global strategy, early reactions and alliances. Suggests the winners will need to be progressive, innovative, quality firms which continue to react quickly to new developments, take risks and invest.
Novel dual-rail gates structure and their application in 1-bit-full-adder

Superconductive Rapid Single Flux Quantum (RSFQ) digital computing system has the tendency to achieve the operating rate of several hundred GHz. Compare to the semiconductor partner, with the pulse width about picoseconds and clock rate of several hundred GHz, the timing uncertainty from fabrication process variations makes it impossible to achieve the large scale integrated chip with global synchronization architecture. Many efforts, in this field, have been made to construct the asynchronous RSFQ timing conformation with advanced performances. In this paper, a novel AND gate and a novel universal gate based on dual-rail methodology are proposed. The new gates have the advantages in less Josephson junction count and less signal time delay over the previous published version. A 1-bit-full-adder has been implemented based on the novel gates, the simulation shows that they function well and can be considered as the candidates in the system construction. Furthermore, the properties of the gates circuits have also been analyzed numerically with its sensitivity for parameters and tolerant for margin error.
Postoperative neurocognitive function and microembolus detection in patients undergoing neck dissection: a pilot study

Background and objective Patients undergoing oncologic neck dissection may have many of the risk factors for carotid artery stenosis, thus predisposing them to perioperative cerebral ischaemic events. The present study was designed to investigate development of postoperative neurocognitive dysfunction in these patients. Methods Twenty-six patients were assessed the day before surgery and 48 h and 12 months after surgery using a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery. Cognitive performance was compared with a matched control group to account for the practise effect associated with repeated testing. Doppler ultrasonography was used to detect intraoperative cerebral microembolism. S100β protein values were evaluated before and immediately after anaesthesia. Results On the second postoperative day, 26.9% of patients undergoing neck dissection had postoperative neurocognitive deficit (POCD), defined as a total deficit score of 2 SD worse than the mean performance in the control group. Microemboli were found only in the neck dissection group. S100β levels were significantly higher after neck dissection (Wilcoxon signed ranked test: P < 0.001). After 12 months, the incidence of POCD was similar in both groups. Conclusion POCD was detectable only after neck dissection in the early postoperative period accompanied by increased incidence of microembolism and protein S100β levels, but not 12 months after surgery.
Cu to Cu interconnect using 3D-TSV and wafer to wafer thermocompression bonding

In this paper we report on the use of Silicon wafer to wafer bonding technology using Trough Silicon Vias (TSV) and Cu to Cu hybrid interconnects. We demonstrate that multiple wiring levels of two separate wafers, can be interconnected on a full wafer scale by means of wafer bonding using classical metallization schemes found in IC's such as Al and Cu interconnect technologies. The wafer to wafer stacking is accomplished by back to face aligned wafer bonding using a combination of polymer bonding and copper to copper thermo-compression bonding. The Cu TSV-last process is inserted after the integration of a classical Al interconnect scheme. The top wafer is thinned down to 25μm and bonded to the landing wafer by hybrid Cu-Cu bonding in a high force bonding tool. Measurements of TSV interconnect chain structures covering the full wafer surface are provided as a demonstration of the relevance of such a process route.
A Structural Decomposition Analysis of Pollution in the Netherlands

This paper reviews the results of a structural decomposition analysis in which the annual changes in a number of air pollutants and solid waste are decomposed according to their causes. The analysis in this paper is applied with the help of the so-called National Accounting Matrix including Environmental Accounts (NAMEA) for the Netherlands, covering annual data for the period 1987-1998. In a sensitivity analysis it is shown that the average of any pair of so-called 'mirror image' decomposition forms will substantially reduce the variation in the estimates. These mirror image couples are approximately just as reliable as the full average of all decomposition forms. Besides reliable results, the full average also foresees the mutual comparability between the distinguished change factors and is therefore applied in the empirical analyses presented in this paper. The results of these analyses contain the macro-economic developments, results on the industry level as well as a comprehensive overview of the origin and destination of pollution in the Dutch economy that includes the environmental consequences of consumption and international trade.
Performance Evaluation of IEEE 802.19.1 Coexistence System

In this paper we analyze mechanisms of coexistence between different cognitive radio systems operating as secondary users in white space frequency bands. In particular, our focus is coexistence mechanisms that can be provided by IEEE 802.19. 1 coexistence system. IEEE 802.19. 1 standard is at the early stage of its development. At this stage it is very important to consider different design directions and focus areas. This paper presents results of performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.19. 1 coexistence system based on simulation. We believe that simulation results shown in this paper and analysis of these results are very important for the future of both IEEE 802.19. 1 standard and products based on this standard.
Information, Cooperation and Trust in Strategic Service Delivery Partnerships

Strategic service-delivery partnerships (SSPs) are a new method of contracting for the delivery of local government services. They are rapidly becoming an important feature of local government in Britain. Negotiating and operating such partnerships successfully is a difficult challenge. They require the development and maintenance of a strongly cooperative relationship between the local authority and the strategic partner. This does not always work and there are examples where SSPs have been terminated. This article analyses SSPs in a transactions cost framework and identifies the contracting problems that can work against the success of SSPs and possible solutions to these problems provided by the development of trust. The likelihood of cooperation being based on trust can be signalled by the gifts both sides make during the procurement process in the form of negotiations, factfinding and preparation of the bid. However, procurement regulations may work to discourage a local authority from attaching a sufficiently high weighting to a factor as intangible as trust in the procurement decision.
Assessment of education and counselling offered by a familial colorectal cancer clinic

We have evaluated whether or not client expectations, in terms of education and information needs, have been met by a multi‐disciplinary familial colorectal cancer clinic. The study used a pre‐ and post‐clinic questionnaire design and 126 (84 women, 42 men) clients of the clinic participated. The most common reason for coming to the clinic is to ‘find out whether there is a gene for colorectal cancer in the family’, followed by ‘to reduce risk for bowel cancer’ and ‘concern for children's risk’. Clients would have preferred to receive more information before attendance at the clinic to help with preparation. Information given during the clinic increased knowledge of bowel cancer genetics and had a positive effect on the accuracy of some clients’ perceptions of their risk of developing cancer. In multivariate analysis, higher risk perceptions, higher education level and greater baseline knowledge predicted post‐clinic knowledge of bowel cancer genetics and an increase in knowledge. Client reports of the presence of a genetic counsellor or medical geneticist in the session also predicted post‐clinic knowledge and an increase in knowledge. Most participants felt they received enough information during the clinic session on various aspects of familial colorectal cancer, but the desire for more written information on prevention, including lifestyle actions, was expressed by many.
Antibody to Cryptococcus neoformans Glucuronoxylomannan Inhibits the Release of Capsular Antigen

ABSTRACT Cryptococcus neoformans releases capsular polysaccharide in the supernatant of liquid cultures and in tissues. Significantly less glucuronoxylomannan (GXM) was released by C. neoformans in the presence of capsule-binding monoclonal antibody (MAb). MAb-mediated inhibition of GXM release may be another mechanism by which humoral immunity can mediate protection against this pathogen.
A Method for Studying Knife Tool Marks on Bone

Abstract: The characteristics of knife tool marks retained on hard tissues can be used to outline the shape and angle of a knife. The purpose of this study was to describe such marks on bone tissues that had been chopped with knives. A chopping stage with a gravity accelerator and a fixed bone platform was designed to reconstruct the chopping action. A digital microscope was also used to measure the knife angle (θ) and retained V‐shape tool mark angle (ψ) in a pig skull. The κ value (elasticity coefficient; θ/ψ) was derived and recorded after the knife angle (θ) and the accompanied velocity were compared with the proportional impulsive force of the knife and ψ on the bone. The constant impulsive force revealed a correlation between the V‐shape tool mark angle (ψ) and the elasticity coefficient (κ). These results describe the tool marks—crucial in the medicolegal investigation—of a knife on hard tissues.