Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Efficiency of Public Spending on Education: An Empirical Comparison of EU Countries

Recent policy suggestions from the European Community underlined the importance of “efficiency” and “equity” in the provision of education while, at the same time, the European countries are required to provide their educational services by minimizing the amount of public money devoted to them. In this paper, an empirical study compares the spending efficiency on education in 20 European countries during the period 2006-2009. OECD-Pisa test scores are used as output, while the “expenditure per student” has been used as the input. The efficiency scores are calculated via a bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) procedure. In a second stage, the efficiency scores are regressed against a set of context variables, which represent the different socio - economic settings (e.g., GDP per capita, unemployment rate, etc.) as well as some important “structural” characteristics of the educational systems. Teachers’ salaries and internet usage (as a proxy for technological “literacy”) play a positive role in affecting educational performance, while GDPpc is negatively related to efficiency. Lastly, Malmquist indexes are calculated to measure the change in efficiency in the period 2006-2009; the results showed that the average efficiency remained basically stable in the period.
Flow cytometer-on-a-chip

Substituting superparamagnetic beads for fluorescent labels used in standard flow cytometry facilitates monolithic integration in a standard 180nm CMOS process without external components. The lack of background eliminates the need for preprocessing, making this platform ideal for point-of-care applications. Differentiation of magnetic bead labels based on ferromagnetic resonance enables assays with more than one biomarker.
Europeanization and French social democracy

France being one of the founders and leading members of the European Union (EU), the process of European integration has therefore been an integral part of French post-war modernization. With the assumption of power by François Mitterrand and the Socialist Party (PS) in 1981, the European integration policy paradigm entered more explicitly than ever before the political and economic orientation of French social democracy, contributing to the evolution in the identity of the French Left. The neo-liberal policy orientation of the EU, especially assertive since the 1986 Single European Act; the end of the Cold War and with it the disappearance of counter-capitalist models; the inroads made into national economic policy-making by globalization; all of these events and trends have combined in the past 20 years to force a transformation of French social democracy, and with it the PS, into a more explicit reformist and European party. This is not to say that the impact of these tremendous pressures has resulted in the homogenization of all West European social democratic parties, simply that a new and common set of constraints and opportunities for a revised political strategy has brought French social democracy closer to a median European model. If by Europeanization one means ‘an incremental process re-orienting the direction and shape of politics to the degree that EU political and economic dynamics become part of the organisational logic of national politics and policy-making’, and that ‘organisational logic’ refers to the ‘adaptive processes of organisations to a changed or changing environment’, then we certainly have plenty of evidence of France and the PS adapting to the new external stimuli of the EU, particularly since the late 1980s. In this article, I shall focus on this adaptation by the PS, and by extension, French Socialist governments, to the new environment in which the EU has become an additional level (and
Anomalies in Cognition: Olfactory Memory

The two experiments presented in this paper examine the effects of strategies and interference tasks on odor recognition. In the first experiment (an extension of Lyman and McDaniel's study from 1986), participants were asked to smell 30 odors and to perform different elaborative tasks for each of them such as: (1) providing a name or a short definition; (2) creating an image; (3) describing a specific life episode; (4) simply smelling the odors. Results showed no effect of encoding tasks on the correct recognition of odors. In the second experiment, participants were exposed to either 15 olfactory stimuli, 15 visual stimuli (photographs of human faces), or 15 acoustic stimuli (environmental sounds). In the four sessions of the experiment, they had to recognize the stimuli whether in a no-interference condition, or in an intramodality, or in two intermodalities interfering conditions. Consistently with the literature, interference affects recognition for visual and acoustic material but has no effect on o.
The adoption of excellence models through cultural and social adaptations: An empirical study of critical success factors and a proposed model

Total quality management (TQM) has become a leading strategy for improving organisational performance and business results. Yet many organisations that try to implement TQM fail, often at a significant cost to their business. This study argues that the successful implementation of TQM has been hindered by a lack of clear implementation guidance, particularly for organisations in regions where traditional business practices are often very different from those in which TQM evolved and is widely followed. In order to provide a better knowledge base in this area, this paper presents an investigation into the processes upon which organisations around the world rely and which led to the successful implementation of TQM by its adoption and adaption to their own socio-cultural environments. The study hypothesises that two types of critical success factors are involved: structural critical factors of excellence or factors required for successful implementation of TQM in any socio-cultural environment, and foundation critical factors of excellence or factors needed for the successful implementation of TQM in specific socio-cultural environments. It is also hypothesised that an integrated process of adoption-adaptation will generate a positive impact on organisational performance.
Fiscal Decentralization and Economic Growth

This paper reviews the current knowledge on an issue of increasing policy interest: what impact fiscal decentralization has on economic growth. Fiscal decentralization may indeed have a direct impact on economic growth but the theoretical underpinnings for this relationship remain largely undeveloped. The absence of an adequate theoretical framework has undermined the validity of the empirical work on this subject. A fair summary of the empirical search for a direct relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth is that it remains an open question. Much less attention has been devoted in the literature to the indirect channels through which fiscal decentralization may affect economic growth, through the impact of fiscal decentralization on economic efficiency, the regional distribution of resources, and macroeconomic stability. This paper explorers the nature of these links and concludes with some thoughts and policy advice.
AFTER-TAX ECONOMIC REPLACEMENT ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT This paper examines after-tax serial replacement analysis under current United States tax law. The law explicitly defines the difference between an asset disposal (retirement) and a like-for-like exchange (replacement). A gain or loss is only realized when an asset is retired while a replacement leads to the transfer of any residual book value balance to the acquired asset. This transferal greatly complicates analysis and leads to non-stationary solutions, even with time invariant costs. We analyze the effect of this movement in book value for assets on replacement decisions. Furthermore, a dynamic programming formulation is presented with a state space defined by asset age and initial book value, as current replacement models cannot correctly capture the after-tax cash flow implications of this balance transfer. The new model is compared to traditional after-tax replacement models which assume that a gain or loss is realized at each asset sale over the horizon. Examples illustrate that this assumption can lead to widely different solutions, especially in the cases where gains or losses from asset sales are large.
Ex-Day Behavior When Investors and Professional Traders Assume Reverse Roles: The Case of Danish Lottery Bonds

Lottery bonds are Danish Treasury obligations which make coupon payments by lottery. Professional traders have a tax preference for the coupon lottery, while investors are tax-neutral and take the other side of the trade. Consistent with tax-based explanations of abnormal ex-day returns, we find that prices fall by more than the lottery mean. Surprisingly, we also find that the price drop over the lottery decreases with the lottery variance. This suggests that investors do not like the lottery. In fact, the Danish Treasury has been able to sell more lottery bonds only by offering above market interest rates.
Urban development, redevelopment and regeneration encouraged by transport infrastructure projects: The case study of 12 European cities

Abstract This paper attempts to describe the potential of urban transport infrastructure projects such as metro, regional rail and tram, to indirectly work as a catalyst for the development and redevelopment of urban areas as well as the regeneration of declining areas. The paper presents the outcome of research on a sample of 12 European cities—Athens, Bratislava, Brussels, Helsinki, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Stuttgart, Valencia, Vienna and Zurich. This research is part of the Transecon project which was funded by the European Commission under the competitive and sustainable growth programme of the fifth framework— and concerned with all kinds of different indirect effects (economic, social and spatial) of new transport infrastructure investments in European cities. The outcome of the research points out that urban transport infrastructure may have a catalytic effect on the development, redevelopment and regeneration of urban areas but there are a lot of other influencing factors which make such re-urbanization processes a successful or unsuccessful story.
FACTORS AFFECTING RIBOFLAVIN PRODUCTION BY ASHBYA GOSSYPII

The methods that are presently employed for the microbiological production of riboflavin on a commercial scale are based upon the remarkable biosynthetic capacities of two species, viz., Clostridium acetobutylicum and Eremothecium ashbyii, for this vitamin. With C. acetobutylicum riboflavin appears concurrently during the anaerobic fermentation of various carbohydrates to butanol, acetone, and ethanol. As early as 1927 Weyer and Rettger observed that a yellow pigment accumulates in cereal mashes fermented by this organism. They attributed it to zein dissolved from corn by the solvent. It was not until several years later (Yamasaki and Yositome, 1938; Miner, 1940) that this pigmented substance was identified as riboflavin. Subsequent studies on the butyl anaerobes by Arzberger (1943), Meade et al. (1945), and others have revealed the critical relationship that exists between the iron concentration of the medium and riboflavin biosynthesis. By controlling this variable, either through adding or restricting iron as dictated by the materials fermented, processes have been developed that are applicable to whey and cereal grain mashes. The production of a greenish-yellow pigment by Eremothecium ashbyii cultivated upon certain solid media was reported in 1935 by Guilliermond et al. The identity of this substance with riboflavin was established by the later studies of Raffy (1937) and Mirimanoff and Raffy (1938a,b). Under submerged aerobic conditions unusually high concentrations of riboflavin are formed by E. ashbyii, and most of the biologically produced vitamin is made with this organism. Several processes involving E. ashbyii combined with specific media and submerged aerobic techniques have been patented within the past few years (Rudert, 1945; Piersma, 1946; Mayer, 1946; Foster, 1947). In addition to the two organisms described above, the elaboration of substantial amounts of riboflavin by other yeasts and bacteria is not uncommon. Examples of such include yeasts of the genus Candida (Burkholder, 1943; Tanner et al., 1945), Mycobacterium smegmatis (Mayer and Rodbart, 1946), and Aerobacter aerogenes (Novak, 1948). Because these species synthesize lesser amounts of riboflavin or because they require carefully controlled environments
The Case for a Simple Two-Sided Electricity Market

This paper builds on the results from our earlier research on the design of electricity markets that have to accommodate the uncertainty associated with high penetrations of renewable sources of energy. The key results show that 1) distributed storage (deferrable demand) is an effective way to reduce total system costs, 2) a simple market structure for energy allows aggregators to meet their customers’ energy needs and provide ramping services to the system operator, and 3) using a receding-horizon optimization to dispatch units for the next market time-step benefits from the availability of more accurate forecasts of renewable generation and allows market participants to adjust their bids and offers in response to this new information. In our two-sided market, distributed storage in the form of deferrable demand is controlled locally by independent aggregators to minimize their expected payments for energy in the wholesale market, subject to meeting the energy needs of their customers. In addition, these aggregators are responsible for maintaining a stable power factor by installing local capabilities that automatically deal with local power imbalances. Failure to do this triggers penalties paid to the system operator. Our earlier results have shown that it is optimal for an aggregator to submit demand bids into a day-ahead market that include threshold prices for charging and discharging storage and also ensure that the expected amount of stored energy is consistent with the capacity limits of their storage. Because departures from the expected daily pattern of renewable generation are generally persistent (highly positive serial correlated), it is likely that the system operator determines an optimum pattern of demand for the aggregator that violates the capacity limits of storage by the end of the 24-hour period. If the market uses a receding horizon, the results in this paper show that aggregators can modify their bids to ensure that the capacity limits of storage are never violated in the next market time-step. In an empirical application, a stochastic form of multi-period security constrained unit commitment with optimal power flow (the MATPOWER Optimal Scheduling Tool, MOST) using a receding-horizon optimization determines the optimum dispatch and reserves for the next hour and forecasts of the nodal prices for the next 24 hours. The results show that locally controlled deferrable demand is almost as effective as centrally controlled deferrable demand as a way to reduce system costs and mitigate the variability of renewable generation. The additional advantage from using a receding horizon is that the system operator always charges/discharges the storage managed locally by aggregators within the capacity constraints of the storage.
Article Contribution and Subsequent Citation Rates: Evidence from European Accounting Review

Recent investigations suggest that research assessments are mainly based on publication counts and journal level and, hence, fail at capturing the multifaceted nature of research performance. Instead, some commentators indicate that focus on the article's contribution would stimulate a more polycentric approach to research. In the current study we investigate the role of an article's contribution on its citations. In doing this, we gather data from European Accounting Review, an outlet that plays an instrumental role in the dissemination of Europe-based accounting research and that holds a long tradition of tolerance towards the use of diverse research methods and paradigms. We employ proxies to evaluate the objective contribution of an article as well as author reputation. Our findings suggest that articles are cited for their contribution rather than as a result of the characteristics of their authors. Our study also poses some suggestions to capture the multifaceted nature of research performance.
TIMELINESS OF ACCOUNTING REPORTS AND THEIR INFORMATIONAL CONTENT ON THE CAPITAL MARKET

Timeliness is recognized as an important characteristic of accounting information by the accounting profession, the users of accounting information, and the regulatory agencies. According to the evidence presented in this paper, accounting reports with shorter delay have a higher informational content than those with longer delay. At the time of release to the capital market, the effect of delay on the information content seems to be more significant in the case of the interim rather than the annual reports. This may be explained by the major characteristics which differentiate the information contained in the interim reports from that contained in the annual reports, the differences in their role in the investor's decision process, and the existence of substitute information.
Local Politics in Border Regions in Central Europe

A major problem in Europe, and especially Central Europe, is border regions dissected by national boundaries. These regions contain ethnically mixed populations. They now are expected to develop a viable democratic politics at the local level. Many have not yet even established their autonomy as legal entities; in most cases, local political parties do not exist there; and the regions have to address the problem of ethnic and language differences. Many of them were closed to their neighbors until the recent democratic transformation. The borders are now open. Although the prosperity of the border regions is dependent on the country of which they are a part, they are underdeveloped economically and socially by almost any standard, certainly a European one. The consequences of closure are several, but the peripheral status of these regions both within their own countries and in Europe is demonstrated by some basic indicators of the quality of life, including electricity, water supply, and health services.
Central Venous Cannulation Done by House Officers in the Intensive Care Unit: A Prospective Study

Central venous cannulation (CVC) is a procedure frequently performed by house staff in the intensive care units of teaching hospitals. In the medical ICUs of our two hospitals, CVC was successfully done by house officers in 172 cases requiring 231 attempts (one operator at one insertion site), for a success rate of 74%. There were 14 complications (6.1%), five requiring intervention, but none fatal. The overall success rate was higher for the internal jugular approach and lower for the external jugular approach than for other sites. The success rate for Swan-Ganz catheterization was higher for the internal jugular than for the subclavian approach. CVC during resuscitation was frequently unsuccessful (41%) and/or complicated (13.6%). Although success rates were comparable, complications were more common among experienced house officers than among interns, perhaps reflecting patient selection. There was a trend toward fewer and/or less severe complications during the course of the month and of the study.
Before the Convention: Strategies and Choices in Presidential Nomination Campaigns

Campaigns to win the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations are now longer, more complex, and more confusing to the observer than ever before. The maze of delegate-selection procedures includes state-run primaries and caucuses, while federal election laws govern campaign financing. In "Before the Convention", political scientist John H. Aldrich presents a systematic analysis of presidential nomination politics, based on application of rational-choice models to candidate behavior. Aldrich views the candidates as decision makers with limited resources in a highly competitive environment. From this perspective, he seeks to determine why and how candidates choose to run, why some succeed and others fail, and what consequences the nomination process has for the general election and, later, for the president in office. Now back in print, "Before the Convention" fills a significant gap in the literature on presidential politics and should be of particular importance to specialists in this area. It will be of interest also to everyone who is concerned with understanding the rules of the game for a complicated but vitally important exercise of American democracy.
Corporate environmental responsibility and audit risk

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between and corporate environmental responsibility (CER) and audit risk. Design/methodology/approach - A survey participation request was mailed to 5,008 US auditors at random. The request provided a link to an electronic survey. The final sample consists of anonymous responses from 163 auditors. Findings - The authors find that auditors, on average, do not perceive a significant relationship between corporate environmental strengths and audit risk; however, they do perceive an increase in audit risk among firms with corporate environmental concerns. Use of CER in the risk assessment process also varies across types of CER: 15 per cent of auditors use corporate environmental strengths to assess audit risk, while 43 per cent of auditors use corporate environmental concerns to assess audit risk. Perception of the CER/audit risk relationship is a significant determinant of CER use. Finally, both types of CER are found to have average usefulness in the risk assessment process. Research limitations/implications - The findings are limited to US auditors; results may not be transferable to other countries. Originality/value - Studies involving the impact of CER on earnings generally involve archival data. By examining the impact of CER on audit risk, using a unique dataset, the authors present a different and timely setting to study the CER/earnings relationship. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to document the relationship between CER and audit risk.
Identifying corresponding patches in SAR and optical imagery with a convolutional neural network

In this paper, we investigate making use of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to solve the task of identifying corresponding patches in very high resolution (VHR) optical and SAR imagery of complicated urban scenery. By doing so, the binary decision function is learnt directly from automatically generated training data and does not resort to any hand-crafted features. First evaluations show great potential for further studies towards a generalized multi-sensor matching procedure.
The value of a transformation zone component in anal cytology to detect HSIL

In a cytology‐based screening program intended to prevent anal cancer, the anal transformation zone (TZ) should be adequately sampled because it is the site most susceptible to the development of the cancer precursor, high‐grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL). An adequate TZ component is defined as comprising at least 10 rectal columnar or squamous metaplastic cells. In the current study, the authors examined whether the presence of a TZ component in anal cytology correlated with the detection of histological HSIL.