Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of attenuation and scatter correction in estimating tumor hypoxia-related kinetic parameters for FMISO dynamic animal-PET imaging

Tumor hypoxia promotes tumor progression and reduces the efficacy of radiation and chemotherapy. A potentially important non-invasive hypoxia imaging technique is positron-emission-tomography (PET) with the radiotracer 18F-fluoromisonidazole (FMISO). FMISO binds to macromolecules and is trapped within cells in the absence of oxygen. The time course of this process may be imaged with dynamic PET, and a pharmacokinetic compartmental model has been used to evaluate the rate constants between different compartments in a tumor. In our Small-Animal-Imaging Facility, most animal-PET data are reconstructed without attenuation-correction (AC) or scatter-correction (SC). We have investigated how these correction factors affect the rate constant’s estimation in hypoxic tumor. A 4D dynamic digital PET phantom is created to simulate a 300-gram rat with a 5-gram xenografted subcutaneous human colorectal adenocarcinoma tumor, injected with a 2-mCi FMISO bolus via the tail vein, and imaged on our Focus-120 micro-PET for 90 minutes. The 4D dynamic image data is then forward projected to simulate the 4D dynamic sinogram. FORE+2DOSEM and FORE+FBP reconstruction protocols are used with and without AC&SC. The reconstructed dynamic images are then analyzed with the pharmacokinetic compartmental model and the estimated kinetic parameters are compared with the original one. It is found that the image-based plasma input function plays an important role in kinetic analysis. Present PET technology could not fully recover the sharp peak of the plasma input function, and makes estimated kinetic parameters differ from the true ones by 5.7∼8.8% with ACSC, and 10.4∼12.6% without ACSC.
Oversight as Constraint or Catalyst? Explaining Agency Influence on State Policy Decision Making

Do agency officials hold influence over the policy decisions made by state legislators and governors? For years, scholars have asserted the important informational role that bureaucrats play within the U.S. policy-making process. However, we have only limited knowledge of the theoretical mechanisms that may allow for this influence, or ultimately, whether this influence matters to public policy outcomes. We theorize that the political oversight of the bureaucracy by elected officials not only constrains the bureaucracy but also provides a pathway for agency officials to advance their preferences by communicating their policy expertise. We assess this argument with survey data from almost 600 state agency heads, drawn from the 50 states and across all agency types. Using a multilevel model, we find that the “oversight mechanism” is a key driver of agency influence over gubernatorial policy decisions; however, it does a poor job explaining agency policy influence within state legislatures. These results suggest that oversight allows agency leaders greater success in lobbying governors than more diffuse and diverse state legislatures.
Changes in wingstroke kinematics associated with a change in swimming speed in a pteropod mollusk, Clione limacina

SUMMARY In pteropod mollusks, the gastropod foot has evolved into two broad, wing-like structures that are rhythmically waved through the water for propulsion. The flexibility of the wings lends a tremendous range of motion, an advantage that could be exploited when changing locomotory speed. Here, we investigated the kinematic changes that take place during an increase in swimming speed in the pteropod mollusk Clione limacina. Clione demonstrates two distinct swim speeds: a nearly constant slow swimming behavior and a fast swimming behavior used for escape and hunting. The neural control of Clione's swimming is well documented, as are the neuromuscular changes that bring about Clione's fast swimming. This study examined the kinematics of this swimming behavior at the two speeds. High speed filming was used to obtain 3D data from individuals during both slow and fast swimming. Clione's swimming operates at a low Reynolds number, typically under 200. Within a given swimming speed, we found that wing kinematics are highly consistent from wingbeat to wingbeat, but differ between speeds. The transition to fast swimming sees a significant increase in wing velocity and angle of attack, and range of motion increases as the wings bend more during fast swimming. Clione likely uses a combination of drag-based and unsteady mechanisms for force production at both speeds. The neuromuscular control of Clione's speed change points to a two-gaited swimming behavior, and we consider the kinematic evidence for Clione's swim speeds being discrete gaits.
Organ Acquisition Cost Centers Part II: Reducing the Burden of Cost and Inventory

Decreasing organ acquisition costs (OAC) reduces the cost of transplantation. The purpose of this article (Part II) is to build on the platform of definitions and concepts developed in Part I to achieve cost‐savings in OAC. We propose several concrete strategies to decrease OAC. We will highlight the value of proactive waitlist management. We will develop the notion that waiting lists share significant similarities with product inventory and that inventory control and management can also decrease OAC. Finally, we will postulate that the value of the waiting list is determined by the number of recipients likely to be transplanted. We have coined the term ‘transplantability index’ of a recipient waiting list. This index can be applied retrospectively to any waiting list in order to evaluate how actively the waiting list is being managed. This novel metric can also be used indirectly to assess and monitor waitlist inventory.
UNRAVELING AN AMERICAN DILEMMA: THE DEMONIZATION OF MARIHUANA

of Masters Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Division of Humanities of Pepperdine University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts UNRAVELING AN AMERICAN DILEMMA: THE DEMONIZATION OF MARIHUANA By John Craig Lupien April, 1995 Chair: John McClung, Ph. D. The primary goal of this thesis is to reveal a new perspective with regard to the dilemma of the prohibition of marihuana. In particular, the subject matter delves into the specific history of the hemp industry of the 1930s. According to this author’s research, the circumstances surrounding the evolution of the marihuana issue in the United States were directly effected by certain developments in the hemp and wood pulp industries of the 1930s. Aspects of this thesis are not entirely original and the author is indebted to the efforts of previous researchers. However, the main arguments of this thesis have been based upon original material. Chair: _________________________ Members:___________________________ ___________________________
An analysis on taiwan broiler farm prices under different chicken import deregulation policies

According to the changes of chicken import policy, it could be divided into three periods: control import, quota import and free import. This study adopts GARCH models and weekly data to analyze the broiler farm prices during these different periods. Based on the empirical test results, it indicates that there is larger long-run persistence effect of shocks in the free import period. The reactions of broiler farm prices to the lag broiler farm prices, survey number of chick after six weeks, pig prices, colorful broiler farm prices, chick prices and feedstuff prices are different during these three periods.
Is It 1958 or 1968? Three Notes on the Longevity of the Revived Bretton Woods System

This paper examines the durability of what we have elsewhere called the Revived Bretton Woods system. We show that the recent behavior of long-term interest rates is consistent with market expectations that the system will last for a considerable period. We also show that emerging economies with chronic current account surpluses have not experienced the financial crises that many have predicted will trigger the system’s breakdown. Unusually long episodes of current account surpluses and reserve accumulations have been followed by real depreciation and capital gains on reserves, with little or no disruption of economic activity. We argue that, under the original Bretton Woods system, the definition of the balance of payments considered relevant was based on the assumption that collateral, not trust, supports international capital flows. We view the current system as likewise supported by collateral, in the form of goods already produced and delivered to the United States.
Pesticide Exposure and Self Reported Home Hygiene: Practices in Agricultural Families

Little is known about environmental exposure to pesticides and the extent to which exposure is affected by drift from agricultural applications and take home exposure from agricultural workers. The study focused on 24 agricultural families in the northwestern United States and measured levels of organophosphate pesticides (OP) in house dust. Pesticide residues were significantly associated with the number of individuals in the home whose work included high exposure pesticide activities. Mean levels of pesticides were higher in the homes of workers who reported waiting more than 2 hours before changing out of their work clothes compared with homes where workers change within 2 hours after returning from work (p < .01). The results of this study provide evidence that workers can inadvertently carry agricultural chemicals from their work into their homes, thereby increasing the risk of pesticide exposure to other family members inside the home.
Double Entry Bookkeeping and the Distributional Properties of a Firm's Financial Ratios

Our purpose here is to assess whether the innate properties of the double entry bookkeeping system are such that financial ratios, calculated from the balance sheet summary measures implied by it, will be generated by distributional forms with non-convergent moments. Our analysis begins with a brief summary of some important analytical properties of the debt and equity components of the double entry bookkeeping system. We then use these to determine the time series and distributional properties of the debt to equity ratio itself. Our analysis shows that even when the evolution of balance sheet summary measures like debt and equity can be described by 'well behaved' distributional processes, there is a distinct possibility that ratios derived from them will evolve in terms of distributional forms with non-convergent moments. We argue that this has serious implications for parameter estimation as well as the integrity of the regression and/or discriminant procedures which underscore bankruptcy and financial distress prediction models based on financial ratios derived from the double entry bookkeeping system. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2004.
The PR Pyramid: Social media and the new role of Public Relations in organizations / A Pirâmide das RP: Os media sociais e o papel das Relações Públicas nas organizações

This paper explores the relationship between social media as tools used by public relations professionals and as part of the daily lives of organizations’ stakeholders, identifying emergent practices in public relations and confronting new perspectives, both professional and academic, on public relations functions and on its role within organizational communication. Departing from the agreement shared by academics and professionals on a profound shift in public relations as a consequence of the increasingly widespread, intense and frequent use of social media, this paper intends to clarify the nature and terms of that shift. Two perspectives are confronted: one of them is focused on emergent professional practices and regards social media as tools at the disposal of the PR professional; the other is broader in scope and views social media as a contextual factor that influences both the stakeholders’ behavior patterns and PR practices, thus redefining the role of public relations within organizational communication. The paper presents results from an exploratory study whose goal was to identify a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of social media on public relations.
Issues in Visualizing Intercultural Dialogue Using Word2Vec and t-SNE

One way to visualize an intercultural dialogue is to plot keywords jointly used by the intercultural speakers to see how the keywords locate relatively to each other, with the position of the keywords signifying some kind of a similarity relationship. We processed a Japanese transcription of a Korean-Japanese dialogue using Word2Vec and t-SNE algorithm to generate various 2D plots of the noun words jointly used by the Korean and Japanese speakers. Through this visualization process, we tracked down some of the issues involved in generating a meaningful visualization of the noun words jointly used by the intercultural speakers.
Multistate recapture models: Modelling incomplete individual histories

Multistate capture-recapture models are a natural generalization of the usual one-site recapture models. Similarly, individuals are sampled on discrete occasions, at which they may be captured or not. However, contrary to the one-site case, the individuals can move within a finite set of states between occasions. The growing interest in spatial aspects of population dynamics presently contributes to making multistate models a very promising tool for population biology. We review first the interest and the potential of multistate models, in particular when they are used with individual states as well as geographical sites. Multistate models indeed constitute canonical capture-recapture models for individual categorical covariates changing over time, and can be linked to longitudinal studies with missing data and models such as hidden Markov chains. Multistate models also provide a promising tool for handling heterogeneity of capture, provided states related to capturability can be defined and used. Such an approach could be relevant for population size estimation in closed populations. Multistate models also constitute a natural framework for mixtures of information in individual history data. Presently, most models can be fit using program MARK. As an example, we present a canonical model for multisite accession to reproduction, which fully generalizes a classical one-site model. In the generalization proposed, one can estimate simultaneously age-dependent rates of accession to reproduction, natal and breeding dispersal. Finally, we discuss further generalizations - such as a multistate generalization of growth rate models and models for data where the state in which an individual is detected is known with uncertainty - and prospects for software development.
Direkte Demokratie, Steuermoral und Steuerhinterziehung: Erfahrungen aus der Schweiz

Abstract First it is clarified what ,,trust“ and ,,tax morale“ actually mean and how they are measured. Especially in German-speaking countries, tax morale is often mixed with tax compliance. But the first is a moral conviction while the second denotes actual behaviour, and both do not necessarily need to be congruent. Then it is shown how direct popular rights empower Swiss citizens to influence their tax burden. Finally, we discuss the impact of direct popular rights on tax morale and on tax compliance as well as the impact of the trust between citizens and tax authorities on the latter. It is shown that direct democracy leads to higher tax morale and compliance, even if tax morale is today rather low in Switzerland compared to other countries.
The limitations of the NIMBY concept for understanding public engagement with renewable energy technologies: a literature review

This online paper may be cited or briefly quoted in line with the usual academic conventions. You may also download it for your own personal use. This paper must not be published elsewhere (e.g. to mailing lists, bulletin boards etc.) without the author's explicit permission. Please note that if you copy this paper you must include this copyright note and not use the paper for commercial purposes or gain in any way.
Geographical information service grid

Grid has been mainly used in the high performance computing area. The properties of geographic information and its related computing properties determine that the grid technology has great potential in the construction of geographic information service system. In this paper, based on the analysis on the character of grid technology and geographic information service system, the concept of the "geographic information service grid" (GISG) is put forward. The four layer model to the construction of GISG is also put forward, which includes 4 layers, i.e. the computing service grid layer, the geographical data service grid layer, the geographical information service grid layer and the geographical knowledge service grid layer. In the next part, the key technologies to construct GISG are discussed. In the construction of GISG, the communication protocol and language are the key parts of the whole system. The application of Grid FTP protocol and GML-based geographic information service grid architecture are studied in this paper
Impact of tolerance on antitumor efficacy of tumor necrosis factor in mice.

Repetitive sublethal doses of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) can induce tolerance or tachyphylaxis to the toxic effects of TNF. Because tumor-bearing (TB) mice are more sensitive to the toxic effects of TNF, this study investigates whether similar tolerance occurs in TB mice and whether it affects the antitumor response of TNF. Nontumor-bearing C3H/Hen mice were treated with twice daily i.p. sublethal escalating doses of human recombinant TNF (2, 2, 3, 3, 4, and 4 micrograms i.p. every 12 h for 6 days) and were challenged 2 days later with a lethal i.v. dose (40 micrograms) of TNF. TNF-pretreated mice had 100% survival as compared to 0% survival in control mice previously treated with saline (P less than 0.01). Tumor-bearing C57BL/6 mice bearing an MCA-106 or MCA-102 sarcoma were treated with an identical TNF-tolerizing regimen (2, 2, 3, 3, 4, and 4 micrograms i.p. every 12 h for 6 days) beginning 3 days following tumor inoculation and were similarly more resistant to a subsequent 100% lethal i.v. treatment dose of TNF than control TB mice. A significantly greater percentage of TNF-pretreated mice bearing the MCA-106 sarcoma survived treatment doses of 8, 12, and 16 micrograms of TNF i.v. than control TB mice. Similarly, a significantly greater percentage of TNF-pretreated mice bearing the MCA-102 sarcoma survived treatment doses of 6 and 9 micrograms of TNF i.v. than control TB mice. However, the ability to administer higher doses of TNF i.v. to TNF-pretreated TB mice did not improve therapeutic efficacy. In mice bearing the MCA-106 tumor the most efficacious treatment responses were seen in animals that were previously naive to TNF, and treatment toxicity (lethality) correlated directly with antitumor efficacy such that larger treatment doses of TNF in tolerant mice resulted in similar antitumor effects as smaller treatment doses in control TB mice. In mice bearing the MCA-102 tumor, equitoxic treatment doses of TNF produced similar antitumor effects in both control and tolerant TB mice. There were no differences in cure rate for TNF-tolerant or control TB mice bearing either tumor. The results suggest that TNF tolerance occurs in TB mice and reduces the toxicity as well as the therapeutic efficacy of TNF.
Corporate governance and value addition efficiency of corporate resources in Thailand

This paper examines the impact of board of directors (BOD) on corporate performance in value addition efficiency (VAE) of resources in an emerging economy namely Thailand in the context of post Asian financial crisis 1997/1998 period. This research uses data of top, as per market capitalisation, listed companies in Thailand for 2005 and 2008 to test the relationship. The study measures VAE of resources using Pulic's value added intellectual coefficient (VAICTM) model. The results find the impact of different BOD attributes on VAE of resources in top Thai companies, which is increasing over the post Asian crisis period. However, the study do not find significant impact of all BOD attributes on VAE which indicates the juvenile state of the BOD's effectiveness in achieving sustainable corporate performance. Managers and the policy makers may use the results to understand the complicated magnitude of BOD governance and its effectiveness in top companies in emerging economy, which might have the implication in developing more effective corporate governance structure in order to tackle the adverse effects of any further financial crisis.
Minimum Wages and Wage Inequality: Some Theory and an Application to the UK

Research suggests that, at the levels set in countries like the US and the UK, minimum wages have little effect on employment but do have impacts on wage inequality. However we lack models that can explain these facts – this paper presents one based on imperfect labour markets. The paper also investigates the impact of the UK’s National Minimum Wage on wage inequality finding it can explain a sizeable part of the evolution of wage inequality in the bottom half of the distribution in the period 1998-2010. We also present evidence that the impact of the NMW reaches up to 40% above the NMW in 2010 which corresponds to the 25th percentile. These spillovers are larger in low-wage segments.
Corporate social responsibility practices, ISO 26000 efforts and CSR performance in Malaysian automotive industry

CSR practices and ISO 26000 are important as drivers for the automotive industry to become more efficient and effective that can improve CSR performance. In order to meet CSR practices and CSR performance requirement, the automotive industry need to implement ISO 26000 efforts. The main purpose of this study is to review the structural relationship between CSR practices, ISO 26000 and CSR performance in Malaysian automotive industry. The structural equation modelling (SEM) has been proposed for conceptual model of this study. Based on the proposed conceptual model and review, research hypotheses were developed. The paper culminates with opportunities for future research work.
A mixed logit model of U.K. household demand for alternative-fuel vehicles.

Concerns regarding the environmental impacts of petrol and diesel cars have stimulated the development of vehicle technologies based on alternative fuels. In contrast to the scientific research which has led to these significant technological developments, there has been a relative paucity of published academic research on the demand from consumers for such vehicles, and this small literature has been almost entirely US-based. This paper, which reports work funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, represents the first study of its kind in the UK. Two stated preference experiments based on households' purchase choices between conventional vehicles and alternative-fuel vehicles were conducted. The data were analysed using various state-of-the-art formulations of logit models including error components logit and random parameters logit. Elasticities derived from the preferred models show that demand for alternative-fuel vehicles is much more sensitive to purchase price than demand for conventional vehicles, although the operating cost elasticities are more in line with existing evidence. It is concluded that alternative-fuel vehicles are unlikely to achieve a significant market share without non-marginal technological and/ or legislative/ fiscal developments to encourage their take-up. (A)