Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ThE POTEnTIAl Of CluSTER DEvElOPmEnT AnD ThE ROlE Of CluSTER SuPPORT POlICIES In lATvIA

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of institutional and policy support for cluster development, and the competitive advantages of regions based on regional labour force concentration. The tool of cluster identification in regional economies - Location Quotient (LQ) - has been applied to measure the concentration of the labour force in the main economic sectors of Latvia and Finland. This comparative analysis has shown that Finland has much stronger regional labour force concentration in certain sectors of the economy, which is not typical for Latvia and reveals that the regional economy of Latvia has much lower potential for cluster development and competitiveness in global markets. The results of this research confirm that governments should support cluster development to achieve sustainable long-term development based on natural growth poles, exploiting the potential of regional comparative advantages such as specific concentration of skills and knowledge (labour force), concentration of industries, natural resources, etc., but not concentrate on short-term priorities in cluster development.
Export Barriers and Stimuli in the Russian Federation

The purpose of this article is to identify and analyse existing export barriers and stimuli in the Russian Federation. The gravity model is used to identify and assess impact of informal export barriers and stimuli. Qualitative approach and statistical analysis is used to identify and assess the impact of formal barriers and stimuli. Russian export value depends on several informal conditions, such as distance between trading countries, economic size of a partner country and its historical heritage. Moreover, there is a wide range of instruments (both international trade and domestic policies) which are used or can be used in the Russian Federation to influence export performance of particular types of goods. Present combination of instruments used suggests that Russia attempts to restructure its export – to reduce the share of energy resources and raw materials and increase the one of industrial goods. Understanding of current export policies in the Russian Federation may be useful for short and medium term forecast of Russian economy development.
Pancreastatin: multiple actions on human intermediary metabolism in vivo, variation in disease, and naturally occurring functional genetic polymorphism.

RATIONALE The chromogranin A (CHGA) fragment pancreastatin (human CHGA250-301) impairs glucose metabolism, but the role of human pancreastatin in vivo remains unexplored. METHODS We studied brachial arterial infusion of pancreastatin (CHGA273-301-amide at approximately 200 nm) on forearm metabolism of glucose, free fatty acids, and amino acids. Plasma pancreastatin was measured in obesity or type 2 diabetes. Systematic discovery of amino acid variation was performed, and the potency of one variant in the active carboxyl terminus (Gly297Ser) was tested. RESULTS Pancreastatin decreased glucose uptake by approximately 48-50%; the lack of change in forearm plasma flow indicated a metabolic, rather than hemodynamic, mechanism. A control CHGA peptide (catestatin, CHGA352-372) did not affect glucose. Insulin increased glucose uptake, but pancreastatin did not antagonize this action. Pancreastatin increased spillover of free fatty acids by about 4.5- to 6.4-fold, but not spillover of amino acids. Insulin diminished spillover of both free fatty acids and amino acids, but these actions were not reversed by pancreastatin. Plasma pancreastatin was elevated approximately 3.7-fold in diabetes, but was unchanged during weight loss. Proteolytic cleavage sites for pancreastatin in vivo were documented by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization/time of flight mass spectrometry. Three pancreastatin variants were discovered: Arg253Trp, Ala256Gly, and Gly297Ser. The Gly297Ser variant had unexpectedly increased potency to inhibit glucose uptake. CONCLUSIONS The dysglycemic peptide pancreastatin is specifically and potently active in humans on multiple facets of intermediary metabolism, although it did not antagonize insulin. Pancreastatin is elevated in diabetes, and the variant Gly297Ser had increased potency to inhibit glucose uptake. The importance of human pancreastatin in vivo as well as its natural variants is established.
Tropoelastin Gene Expression in the Rat Pulmonary Vasculature: A Developmental Study

ABSTRACT: The elastic laminae in a vessel provide resilience to its wall. In perinatal and adult rats, we used in situ hybridization to localize the mRNA for tropoelastin (TE) in endothelial cells, medial smooth muscle cells, and adventitial fibroblasts of pulmonary arteries and veins to determine the contribution of these cells to laminae formation. We found that 1) all three cell types are elastogenic but for each the ontogenic pattern is different, 2) signal in the artery is strongest in the late fetal lung, 5) postnatally TE expression decreases first in the outer medial smooth muscle cells, and 4) the pattern of expression in arteries differs from that in veins. In the d 19 fetus, the signal for TE mRNA was higher in arteries than in veins. In the immediate postnatal period, the arterial signal declined, whereas the signal in veins increased. By postnatal d 21, the arterial TE signal per cell had significantly decreased to an intensity lower than that in veins. In the adult rat lung, no TE mRNA was detected by in situ hybridization. The reciprocal alterations in TE expression in pulmonary arteries and veins may suggest a response to the postnatal change in pulmonary blood pressure. We speculate that because all three cell types are potentially elastogenic they may all play a role in the remodeling that occurs after vascular injury.
OLD ECONOMICS FOR NEW PROBLEMS ‐LIVESTOCK DISEASE: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

The strength and credibility of agricultural economics analysis, and especially ‘production economics,’ stem from its clear links with identifiable technical processes and commonly-confronted decisions about resource use. Despite its importance as a serious imperfection in livestock production, the phenomenon of disease has not been widely explored within this analytical framework. This paper sets out to characterise animal disease as an economic problem and explore an economist's approach to what might otherwise be considered an essentially veterinary problem. Some basic models, rooted in conventional production economics, are proposed to illuminate the economic costs of disease and the conceptual basis for optimal strategies in disease control. A number of areas for further methodological and empirical development are put forward. As may be expected of Presidential Addresses to the Society, the paper encourages agricultural economists to pursue further work in this general area.
High-Throughput Identification of Bacteria and Yeast by Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry in Conventional Medical Microbiology Laboratories

ABSTRACT Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is suitable for high-throughput and rapid diagnostics at low costs and can be considered an alternative for conventional biochemical and molecular identification systems in a conventional microbiological laboratory. First, we evaluated MALDI-TOF MS using 327 clinical isolates previously cultured from patient materials and identified by conventional techniques (Vitek-II, API, and biochemical tests). Discrepancies were analyzed by molecular analysis of the 16S genes. Of 327 isolates, 95.1% were identified correctly to genus level, and 85.6% were identified to species level by MALDI-TOF MS. Second, we performed a prospective validation study, including 980 clinical isolates of bacteria and yeasts. Overall performance of MALDI-TOF MS was significantly better than conventional biochemical systems for correct species identification (92.2% and 83.1%, respectively) and produced fewer incorrect genus identifications (0.1% and 1.6%, respectively). Correct species identification by MALDI-TOF MS was observed in 97.7% of Enterobacteriaceae, 92% of nonfermentative Gram-negative bacteria, 94.3% of staphylococci, 84.8% of streptococci, 84% of a miscellaneous group (mainly Haemophilus, Actinobacillus, Cardiobacterium, Eikenella, and Kingella [HACEK]), and 85.2% of yeasts. MALDI-TOF MS had significantly better performance than conventional methods for species identification of staphylococci and genus identification of bacteria belonging to HACEK group. Misidentifications by MALDI-TOF MS were clearly associated with an absence of sufficient spectra from suitable reference strains in the MALDI-TOF MS database. We conclude that MALDI-TOF MS can be implemented easily for routine identification of bacteria (except for pneumococci and viridans streptococci) and yeasts in a medical microbiological laboratory.
Victimization of the mentally ill Vitimização de doentes mentais

Background: Individuals with serious mental illnesses compose a group particularly vulnerable to victimization. This major susceptibility to violent crimes is due to the impairment of their cognitive functions and to the living conditions of these individuals. Objectives: This paper aimed to perform a systematic review of the literature about the occurrence and factors associated with victimization in this population, in addition to evaluate the national literature about the subject. Methods: Publications that assessed the prevalence of victimization in individuals with serious mental illness were analyzed. Medline (1966 to February 2013) and Lilacs (1982 to February 2013) databases were searched. Separate searches were conducted for the keywords “mental illness”, “psychiatric disorder(s)”, “mental disorder(s)”, “schizophrenia”, “psychosis”, “psychotic”, “depression”, “bipolar”, combined with each of the following keywords: “victimization”, “victimisation”, “sexual abuse”, “physical abuse”. Results: Twenty papers were found. There were no publications on the topic in national and Latin-American literature. Although they differ in methodology, in the concept of victimization and in sociodemographic and clinical variables, the studies showed that patients with serious mental disorders present higher risk of victimization when compared to the general population. The main factors associated with victimization were: substance use, young age, severe symptomatology, recent history of violence perpetration, criminal history, male gender, and homelessness. Discussion: Individuals with serious mental disorders show high rates of victimization. The subject deserves further studies in our area. Passos AF, et al. / Rev Psiq Clín. 2013;40(5):191-6
Improving positive predictive value in computer-aided diagnosis using mammographic mass and microcalcification confidence score fusion based on co-location information

In this study, a novel fusion framework has been developed to combine the detection of both breast masses and microcalcifications (MCs), aiming to improve positive predictive value (PPV) in Computer-aided Diagnosis (CADx). Clinically, it has been widely accepted that a mass associated with MC is a useful indicator of predicting the malignancy of the mass. In light of this fact, given that a mass and MCs are co-located each other (i.e., they are at the same location), the proposed fusion framework combines confidence scores of the mass and MCs for the purpose of improving the probability that the mass is malignant. To this end, the popular Bayesian network model is applied to effectively combine the detection confidence scores and to achieve higher accuracy for malignant mass classification. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed fusion framework, 31 mammograms were collected from the public DDSM database. The proposed fusion framework can increase the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) from 0.7939 to 0.8806, and the partial area index (PAUC) above the sensitivity of 0.9 from 0.1270 to 0.2280, compared to the CADx system without exploiting co-location information with MCs. Based on these results, it can be expected that the proposed fusion framework can be readily applied for realizing CADx systems with the higher PPV.
The Strategic Study of National Quality Award through Business Excellence Model - The IBM, Panasonic and E.SUN Bank Cases in Taiwan

Quality is a dignity to a country and also masterpiece and bedrock for the development of a country. To recover economical prosperity immediately right from the II world war, Japan founded Demin Quality Award to encourage the improvement of quality and promote the whole scale of competence core for enterprises in 1951. All the products produced by Japan are entirely favoured by the customers around the world during the period of 1975. The Japanese made automobiles, electronics and appliances are inexpensive and competitive enough to sluggish the economy growth of USA. To counter the serious threats and regain the advantage of the market, the United States finally founded Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, MBNQA to provide a series of
Option value in low-carbon technology policies

The political dilemma presented by the deployment of large-size low-carbon technologies (LCTs) is analysed using a simple dynamic model to investigate the relation between irreversible investments and learning-by-doing within a context of exogeneous uncertainty about the carbon price. It is shown that in some cases when information about the future carbon price is expected, the irreversibility effect holds and fewer LCT plants should be developed. In other cases, this result is reversed, and acquiring information can justify the early deployment of LCT. In particular, marginal reasoning is limited when learning-by-doing, and more generally endogenous technical change, is considered. When acquiring information is expected, the optimal policy can move from a corner optimum with no LCT deployment to an interior optimum with a strictly positive development.
Modelling the persistence of conditional variances

This paper will discuss the current research in building models of conditional variances using the Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedastic (ARCH) and Generalized ARCH (GARCH) formulations. The discussion will be motivated by a simple asset pricing theory which is particularly appropriate for examining futures contracts with risk averse agents. A new class of models defined to be integrated in variance is then introduced. This new class of models includes the variance analogue of a unit root in the mean as a special case. The models are argued to be both theoretically important for the asset pricing models and empirically relevant. The conditional density is then generalized from a normal to a Student-t with unknown degrees of freedom. By estimating the degrees of freedom, implications about the conditional kurtosis of these models and time aggregated models can be drawn. A further generalization allows the conditional variance to be a non-linear function of the squared innovations. Throughout empirical.
A [beta]-Core Existence Result and Its Application to Oligopoly Markets

Abstract This paper establishes a β-core existence result in a large class of normal form TU (transferable utility) games. In the oligopoly markets of a homogeneous good, the TU β-core is always equal to the TU α-core, and they are nonempty if all profit functions are continuous and concave. In a general game, the TU β-core is nonempty if (a) all strategy sets are compact and convex, (b) all payoff functions are continuous and concave, and (c) the game satisfies the strong separability. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C62, C71, C72.
Opposition Growth in Dominant Party Systems: Coalitions in South Africa

What is responsible for the decline of democratically dominant parties and the corresponding growth of competitive party systems? This article argues that, despite a ruling party's dominance, opposition forces can gain by winning important subnational offices and then creating a governance record that they can use to win new supporters. It focuses on South Africa as a paradigmatic dominant party system, tracing the increased competitiveness of elections in Cape Town and the surrounding Western Cape province between 1999 and 2010. These events show how party strategies may evolve, reflecting how party elites can learn from forming coalitions.
The two‐stage decision model of vertical integration

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to develop a two‐stage decision model of vertical integration by breaking down integration decisions into two stages: extent of integration and direction of integration.Design/methodology/approach – The study uses price premium as a proxy for differentiation‐based competitive advantage. The relationship between the extent of vertical integration and price premium through a vehicle of consumers' brand perception is explored. A segmentation‐based analysis is performed to study whether different vertical integration configurations are related to price premiums at different levels.Findings – Vertical integration relates positively to price premium set by apparel companies; consumers' perception of brand quality mediates the relationship. Findings also suggest that an organization should opt for integration if vertical integration generates greater effect on price premium as relative to the cost. Strength of internal and forward integration is related strongly to higher price.
Research Note - When Do Consumers Value Positive vs. Negative Reviews? An Empirical Investigation of Confirmation Bias in Online Word of Mouth

In the online word-of-mouth literature, research has consistently shown that negative reviews have a greater impact on product sales than positive reviews. While this negativity effect is well documented at the product level, there is less consensus on whether negative or positive reviews are perceived to be more helpful by consumers. A limited number of studies document a higher perceived helpfulness for negative reviews under certain conditions, but accumulating empirical evidence suggest the opposite. To reconcile these contradictory findings, we propose that consumers can form initial beliefs about a product on the basis of the product’s summary rating statistics (such as the average and dispersion of the product’s ratings), and that these initial beliefs play a vital role in their subsequent evaluation of individual reviews. Using a unique panel data set collected from Apple’s App Store, we empirically demonstrate confirmation bias – that consumers have a tendency to perceive reviews that confirm (vs. dis-confirm) their initial beliefs as more helpful, and that this tendency is moderated by their confidence in their initial beliefs. Further, we show that confirmation bias can lead to greater perceived helpfulness for positive reviews (positivity effect) when the average product rating is high, and for negative reviews (negativity effect) when the average product rating is low. Thus, the mixed findings in the literature can be a consequence of confirmation bias. This paper is among the first to incorporate the important role of consumers’ initial beliefs and confidence in such beliefs (a fundamental dimension of metacognition) into their evaluation of online reviews, and our findings have significant implications for researchers, retailers and review websites.
An experimental analysis of moral hazard in team

This paper reports 5 laboratory sessions that analyze the effects of group sizes in the voluntary contribution mechanism, when contribution level is either complementary or substitute. The theorical argument is that each production function provides different incentives for the agent along scale changes. When contribution levels are substitutes, bigger groups provide more incentives for free-riders, thus reducing the contribution level, because of decreasing marginal contribution - the 1/N problem -, Kandel and Lazear (1992). On the other hand, if marginal contribution is independent of the group size, as the case where contributions are complementary, the public good provision may increase together with the group size, as in Adams (2002). Our experiment results show that for both production functions bigger groups reduce contribution level and that, when efforts are substitutes, the contribution level is significantly higher. (JEL: H41 J33 C92)
Key Role for AMP-Activated Protein Kinase in the Ventromedial Hypothalamus in Regulating Counterregulatory Hormone Responses to Acute Hypoglycemia

OBJECTIVE—To examine in vivo in a rodent model the potential role of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) within the ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) in glucose sensing during hypoglycemia. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Using gene silencing technology to selectively downregulate AMPK in the VMH, a key hypothalamic glucose-sensing region, we demonstrate a key role for AMPK in the detection of hypoglycemia. In vivo hyperinsulinemic-hypoglycemic (50 mg dl−1) clamp studies were performed in awake, chronically catheterized Sprague-Dawley rats that had been microinjected bilaterally to the VMH with an adeno-associated viral (AAV) vector expressing a short hairpin RNA for AMPKα. RESULTS—In comparison with control studies, VMH AMPK downregulation resulted in suppressed glucagon (∼60%) and epinephrine (∼40%) responses to acute hypoglycemia. Rats with VMH AMPK downregulation also required more exogenous glucose to maintain the hypoglycemia plateau and showed significant reductions in endogenous glucose production and whole-body glucose uptake. CONCLUSIONS—We conclude that AMPK in the VMH plays a key role in the detection of acute hypoglycemia and initiation of the glucose counterregulatory response.
A Comparative Study of Indian Indices with a Focus on Shariah Indices

The question of Islamic economy being a social economy rather than a viable economy has been raised and debated time over time. To prove the viability of Islamic financial system as an alternative to the interest based financial system, it is an imperative to prove its commercial viability over the modern financial system. To provide Islamic economics as an alternative to modern financial system, its viability, application and logic needs to be studied and empirically tested. This study is an empirical attempt to verify the application of the concepts and beliefs of Islamic finance in various investment avenues, including Shariah and non Shariah investments. It attempts to compare and study the returns from Shariah and non-Shariah investments by taking relevant indices as a proxy for respective markets.
The Role of Real Estate in Efficient Investment Portfolios

Looks at the risk/return characteristics of real estate on the basis of both appraisal and market values. Broadens this analysis to include inflation. Makes a series of observations about the role of real estate in efficient investment portfolios. Concludes that as long as direct real estate is valued at appraisal value it is unmistakably a solid inflation hedge.
Transatlantic Austerity 2010-…

‘Austerity’ was the 2010 word of the year according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, with more that 250,000 clicks on the online edition. This papers examines fiscal austerity in the specific context of the 12 early members of the European Economic and Monetary Union and, for comparative purposes, the United Kingdom and the United States, in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2008-09. This emprical analysis of austerity policies is organized in three parts. First, an index of austerity is proposed based on the contraction of the public sector's net contribution to the economy. Then, there follows an assessment of austerity under the two dimensions of the improvement of public finances and interest rates, and of the collateral effects on output and employment. The main conclusion is that, especially for Euro-countries, austerity has so far missed its promised goals except restriction of budget deficits. Finally, three research lines are discussed that may explain why austerity may not (did not) work.