Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PERCEPTION OF BOGOTA'S CITIZENS ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, DEGREE OF OPTIMISM AND ALLOCATION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE IMPAIRMENT

This study explores the perception of citizens of the city of Bogota (Colombia) on the current state of the environment at local, national and global level, and the prospect of what it will be in the future, in order to provide guidance for the development of environmental components of citizenship education. It also investigates the allocation of responsibility for environmental management in the future. Participants were 118 people, men and women aged over 18 years with different levels of schooling. The instruments used were the Environmental Future Scale by Gifford et al. (2009) to which two items relevant to the assessment of the environment in Colombia were incorporated, and the Allocation Scale for Environmental Responsibility by Barros, Pinheiro and Gunther (2010). Results showed moderate pessimism for the national level, and high for the international and local case. Regarding the allocation of responsibility, an external locus of control was identified in terms of the causes of environmental degradation, where the main actors mentioned were other people and the national government. Findings are discussed in terms of a comparison with similar studies elsewhere in the world and of its implications for promoting pro-environmental behavior and the attribution of responsibility on the part of the citizens of Bogota, as well as the effect of the media assessing the state of the environment.
Internal Control Reporting Regulation: A Law and Economics Perspective

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was enacted in 2002 in response to the collapse of several previously highly regarded firms, including Enron and Worldcom. The goal of SOX was to increase investor confidence in financial markets. However, there has been much debate about whether the costs of compliance with SOX outweigh the benefits it produces, particularly with respect to its internal control reporting (ICR) requirements under section 404. After a brief introduction in Part I, Part II of the paper discusses the Coase Theorem, which posits that economic regulation serves no purpose in the absence of transaction costs. The Coase framework is then applied to financial markets in the abstract and it is explained how ICR regulation can, in fact, expand total output. Part III then analyzes the efficacy of the various ICR regulations, both pre- and post-SOX, and determines that Section 404 of SOX is an example of over-regulation. The paper then closes by explaining how the lessons learned from SOX's shortcomings and Section 404 in particular are relatable to our current economic crisis.
Observations of serotonin and FMRFamide‐like immunoreactivity in palp sensory structures and the anterior nervous system of spionid polychaetes

Evidence suggests that ciliated sensory structures on the feeding palps of spionid polychaetes may function as chemoreceptors to modulate deposit‐feeding activity. To investigate the probable sensory nature of these ciliated cells, we used immunohistochemistry, epi‐fluorescence, and confocal laser scanning microscopy to label and image sensory cells, nerves, and their organization relative to the anterior central nervous system in several spionid polychaete species. Antibodies directed against acetylated αtubulin were used to label the nervous system and detail the innervation of palp sensory cells in all species. In addition, the distribution of serotonin (5‐HT) and FMRFamide‐like immunoreactivity was compared in the spionid polychaetes Dipolydora quadrilobata and Pygospio elegans. The distribution of serotonin immunoreactivity was also examined in the palps of Polydora cornuta and Streblospio benedicti. Serotonin immunoreactivity was concentrated in cells underlying the food groove of the palps, in the palp nerves, and in the cerebral ganglion. FMRFamide‐like immunoreactivity was associated with the cerebral ganglia, nuchal organs and palp nerves, and also with the perikarya of ciliated sensory cells on the palps. J. Morphol. , 2008. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Surmising Consumer Demand System & Structural Changes Using Time Series Data

Consumer demand for food and non-food items in Pakistan has attracted the attention of various researchers. They have employed different parametric approaches, like single equation, double log models, linear expenditure system and extended linear expenditure system. Most of the studies were based on household income and expenditure survey data. Like other household surveys, HIES data do not give information about prices, due to which price elasticities could not estimated. This task could not be accomplished partly because, in order to examine the existence and the nature of structural change and estimation of price elasticities, time series data was required. In this context the present study is a step ahead. In this analysis time series data has been used on meat group from 1950-51 to 2003-2004. We estimated the linear approximation of almost ideal demand system (LA/AIDS). The model is used to estimate the parameters of meat demand equations. Furthermore, the existence and the nature of the structural change is checked by using LA/AIDS. The results from LA/AIDS model show a shift in consumer demand in case of chicken in 1991-92. Price and expenditure elasticities have also been calculated. The estimates of price and income elasticities are also consistent with economic theory.
Compulsory Voting and Public Finance

Conventional wisdom suggests that compulsory voting lowers the influence of specialinterest groups and leads to policies that are better for less privileged citizens, who often abstain when voting is voluntary. To scrutinize this conventional wisdom, I study public goods provision and rents to specialinterest groups in a probabilistic voting model with campaign contributions in which citizens can decide how much political information to acquire, and whether to vote or abstain. I find that compulsory voting, modeled as an increase in abstention costs, raises the share of poorly informed and impressionable voters, thereby making special-interest groups more influential and increasing their rents. Total government spending and taxes increase as well, while the effect on public goods provision is ambiguous. Compulsory voting may thus lead to policy changes that harm even less privileged citizens.
Impact of Interprofessional Education Among Nursing and Paramedic Students

Simulation-based interprofessional education is beneficial, but it is not clear whether the nature of the simulation has any impact. A pretest and posttest study was conducted among nursing (n = 131) and paramedic (n = 58) students participating in mass casualty incident (MCI) simulations versus handoff communication simulations. Nursing students had better attitudes toward interprofessional education, as well as higher levels of satisfaction and self-confidence, after handoff communication simulations in comparison with MCI simulations. Active participation in clinical simulations appears to have a greater positive impact on nursing students.
An Uncertain Future for the BBC World Service

In recent years, the BBC World Service has undergone the most radical overhaul of its governance, finance and working practices since the Second World War. In examining these changes, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee report on The Future of the BBC World Service articulates ‘clear differences’ between it and the BBC about how the World Service should be governed, and ‘serious reservations’ about the transfer of funding in April this year from government grant-in-aid to the licence fee. With a new BBC Charter due in 2017, will the distinct ethos and culture of the World Service survive this major reorganisation?
Regional Patterns of Industrial Development During China's Economic Transition

This paper pinpoints "circular and cumulative causation" as the fundamental mechanism driving the observed trend of uneven industrial development in the Chinese economy. A shift-share analysis of manufacturing performance at the provincial level identifies five provinces in Southeast China - Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong - as the main beneficiaries of this cumulative process during China's transition period. A descriptive analysis identifies some of the specific transitional factors and policy choices that have compounded the natural tendency towards regional inequality in China's industrializing economy.
An Analog-Digital Character Recognition System

The importance of solving the measurement problem in character recognition systems before or collaterally with the decision problem is stressed. Measurements themselves are decision processes. In the system discussed here the measurements constitute decisions on the probable presence and most likely orientation of the edges of the character strokes in each elementary scanning area. This permits an effective and economical sequential feature detection in which the statistical variations due to printing and scanning variations are taken into account. The article concludes with a discussion of the role of the computer in recognition-logic design.
Neural interactions between flicker-induced self-organized visual hallucinations and physical stimuli

Spontaneous pattern formation in cortical activity may have consequences for perception, but little is known about interactions between sensory-driven and self-organized cortical activity. To address this deficit, we explored the relationship between ordinary stimulus-controlled pattern perception and the autonomous hallucinatory geometrical pattern formation that occurs for unstructured visual stimulation (e.g., empty-field flicker). We found that flicker-induced hallucinations are biased by the presentation of adjacent geometrical stimuli; geometrical forms that map to cortical area V1 as orthogonal gratings are perceptually opponent in biasing hallucinations. Rotating fan blades and pulsating circular patterns are the most salient biased hallucinations. Apparent motion and fractal (1/f) noise are also effective in driving hallucinatory pattern formation (the latter is consistent with predictions of spatiotemporal pattern formation driven by stochastic resonance). The behavior of these percepts suggests that self-organized hallucinatory pattern formation in human vision is governed by the same cortical properties of localized processing, lateral inhibition, simultaneous contrast, and nonlinear retinotopic mapping that govern ordinary vision.
High-field pulsed electron–electron double resonance spectroscopy to determine the orientation of the tyrosyl radicals in ribonucleotide reductase

Class I ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) are composed of two subunits, R1 and R2. The R2 subunit contains the essential diferric cluster-tyrosyl radical (Y·) cofactor, and R1 is the site of the conversion of nucleoside diphosphates to 2′-deoxynucleoside diphosphates. It has been proposed that the function of the tyrosyl radical in R2 is to generate a transient thiyl radical (C439·) in R1 over a distance of 35 Å, which in turn initiates the reduction process. EPR distance measurements provide a tool with which to study the mechanism of radical initiation in class I RNRs. These types of experiments at low magnetic fields and frequencies (0.3 T, 9 GHz) give insight into interradical distances and populations. We present a pulsed electron–electron double resonance (PELDOR) experiment at high EPR frequency (180-GHz electron Larmor frequency) that detects the dipolar interaction between the Y·s in each protomer of RNR R2 from Escherichia coli. We observe a correlation between the orientation-dependent dipolar interaction and their resolved g-tensors. This information has allowed us to define the relative orientation of two radicals embedded in the active homodimeric protein in solution. This experiment demonstrates that high-field PELDOR spectroscopy is a powerful tool with which to study the assembly of proteins that contain multiple paramagnetic centers.
A public management road less travelled: Clients as co-producers of public services

Since the end of the 1970s, alternatives to internal government production of public services have assumed increasing prominence. The most important of these has been contracting out, but a less travelled road has been co-production: the involvement of citizens, volunteers and clients in producing public services as well as consuming them. This article focuses on client co-production. It argues that by ignoring this option, governments have closed off one important option in the repertoire of management approaches. It demonstrates the necessity of client co-production to service-delivery and legal compliance, and considers examples of government agencies which have sought to harness it in positive ways.
Intellectual property strategy for competitive advantage

The objective of this paper is to examine the correlation between intellectual property (IP) strategy and competitive advantage and performance among the information technology (IT) companies operating in Pune, India. Primary data from survey of managers responsible for intellectual property in the IT companies and secondary published data from annual company financial reports were used to conduct statistical analysis (Spearman’s rho and Kendall’s tau), focusing on the objectives of the study. The results of the study show that there is a significant impact of intellectual property strategy to competitive advantage and company performance in the IT industry in India. IP needs to be used as a strategic tool by top management to compete effectively in the marketplace and periodic IP audit needs to be done to valuate the intangible assets owned by the company. Various intangible assets valuation methods practiced globally have also been explored in this study, for Indian companies to adapt. NASSCOM, the Indi.
Toward a More Inclusive Poverty Knowledge

Abstract This paper posits that specialization within disciplines has enabled a fragmentation of knowledge in poverty research, which results in individualistic explanations for poverty that arise naturally from disconnects inherent in isolating frameworks. It proposes that the use of a traumatological framework provides nuances of argument missing from previous discussions, which may allow us to more critically examine the ‘culture of poverty’ thesis. Such an examination may lead us to consider an alternative explanation. Rather than inherent cultural attributes, descriptors of poverty populations may be manifestations of the symptoms produced by the violence of poverty and other life experiences, and the resultant trauma.
Market Neutral Strategies

Equity market neutral strategies take offsetting long and short positions in similarly mispriced securities. They are considered to be close relatives of long/short strategies, the key distinction being the degree of systematic risk that a manager is willing to bear. A manager who is not keen on bearing systematic risk at any time can be regarded as a market neutral manager. Managers profit during economic upturns when their long holdings appreciate quicker than the decline in value of their short positions. In periods of economic downturn, they profit when their short positions appreciate quicker than the decline in value of their long holdings. In this issue's trading strategy forum, a market neutral manager provides readers with a clearer and more informed understanding of the investment potential of this strategy and his firm's particular approaches to capturing the return/risk trade-offs within the market neutral strategy.
Population genetic structure and colonization history of Bombus terrestris s.l. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) from the Canary Islands and Madeira

The bumble bee Bombus terrestris L. is a geographically variable species with a wide distribution in Europe, the near East, northern Africa, Mediterranean islands, the Canary Islands and Madeira. Based on morphological and coat colour pattern differences, the bumble bee populations of the Canary Islands and Madeira are currently treated as separate species, B. canariensis and B. maderensis, respectively. To analyse the phylogeographical associations of these bees with continental B. terrestris, one population each from four islands of the Canaries and one population from Madeira were studied. Genetic variability was assessed at nine microsatellite loci and a fragment of the mitochondrial gene cytochrome b. Genetic differentiation among islands, and between islands and the continent, was extensive. A NJ-tree based on microsatellites strongly supported the distinctness of the Canary Island populations, whereas the Madeira sample was genetically more similar to the continental populations of B. terrestris from Europe. MtDNA sequence data were in good agreement with nuclear markers. They suggest that haplotypes ancestral with respect to B. lucorum occur on the Canary Islands, whereas derived haplotypes were found on the European continent. The Madeira population shares the most common haplotype of continental B. terrestris. Nuclear and mtDNA data both indicate that bumble bees from the Canaries and Madeira do not share a common colonization history.
A k-band gain enhanced power amplifier in 0.18μm CMOS process by slow wave structure

A 18 to 24-GHz broadband power amplifier (PA) by 0.18 um CMOS technology is presented in this paper. The low loss microstrip line matching technique is used to reduce transmission losses and achieve higher gain, PAE and enough output power. An improved Gain-boosting technique is also included in the PA architecture to improve high frequency gain and gain flatness. The measurement results show that small-signal gain is large than 18.5dB from 18 to 24-GHz, while the gain variation is less than 1.5dB. The maximum PAE is about 18%, the output P1dB is 13.1 dBm and 15dBm Psat.
UNDERSTANDING LINEAR AND NONLINEAR ASPECTS OF PRODUCT CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT FROM THE ORGANISATIONAL INTERPRETATION PERSPECTIVE

The product concept is crucial in new product development (NPD) because it represents an NPD project’s goal. In this context, most prior studies have regarded product concept development as a linear process but some recent studies have revealed that it also has nonlinear characteristics. The objective of this paper is to explore why this inconsistency has arisen and to develop a model and theory that illustrate both aspects of product concept development. To achieve this, we adopt the perspective of organisational interpretation systems (Daft and Weick (1984). Toward a model of organisations as interpretation systems. Academy of Management Review, 9(2), 289–295) and explore eight product development cases. Consequently, we develop a three-stage model and find that the linearity or nonlinearity of product concept development is determined by each NPD team’s assumption about the environment. We also consider product innovativeness and function equivocality, and establish that these are related to the NPD teams’ assumptions about the environment.
Evaluation of the detoxifying effect of yeast glucomannan on aflatoxicosis in broilers as assessed by gross examination and histopathology

1. We evaluated the efficacy of yeast glucomannan (Mycosorb®), incorporated into the diet at 0·5 and 1 g/kg, in reducing the detrimental effects of 2 mg aflatoxin/kg diet on growing broiler chicks from 1 to 21 d of age. 2. A total of 240 male broiler chicks (Ross-308) was divided into 6 treatment groups [Control, Aflatoxin (AF), Yeast glucomannan (YG; 0·5 g/kg), AF plus YG (0·5 g/kg), YG (1 g/kg), and AF plus YG (1 g/kg)]. 3. Ten chicks from each of the 6 groups were slaughtered and pathological examinations were performed on the liver, bursa of Fabricius, thymus, spleen and kidney. 4. The aflatoxin treatment caused moderate to severe hydropic/fatty degeneration in the hepatocytes of the liver and the tubular epithelium of the kidneys, and follicular depletion in the bursa of Fabricius, thymus and spleen. 5. Yeast glucomannan added to the aflatoxin-containing diet at 0·5 and 1 g/kg diminished the severity of pathological changes, slightly and moderately, respectively. The number of affected organs was also reduced in the group given 1 g/kg yeast glucomannan, compared to the aflatoxin group. 6. These results show that yeast glucomannan effectively diminished the adverse effects of aflatoxin on the pathological changes and that the higher concentration of yeast glucomannan (1 g/kg) was more effective than the lower concentration (0·5 g/kg) and itself had no adverse effect.
Modelling and Forecasting UK Tourism Demand in Western Europe: Illustrations of TVP-LAIDS Models' Superiority over Other Econometric Approaches

The almost ideal demand system (AIDS) model, principally in its linearly approximated form-LAIDS, has shown its advantages over single-equation approaches in studying tourism demand. Meanwhile, the time-varying-parameter (TVP) model has shown its superior forecasting ability compared to other singleequation methods in previous tourism demand studies. The principal aim of this study is to develop TVP-LAIDS models in both cointegration (CI) and error correction (EQ forms, examining the improvement of forecasting accuracy relative to the conventional static LAIDS, within the tourism context. The study also covers the fixed-parameter (FP) dynamic EC-LAIDS model, which has recently been introduced into tourism demand studies by Durbarry and Sinclair (2003). For the first time, the EC-LAIDS model is fully illustrated within the tourism context, in terms of both long-run and short-run elasticity analysis and forecasting ability evaluation. In addition, this study includes the single-equation TVP-EC model, which has been employed in other economic fields but not previously in tourism studies. The empirical study of UK outbound tourism demand in Western Europe, focusing on France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain, shows that incorporation of the TVP technique into both the CI and the EC forms of the LAIDS and the introduction of error correction mechanism into the FP LAIDS result in substantial improvements of forecasting accuracy of the conventional FP static LAIDS. Another finding is that the substitutability effect occurs between each of the three pairs of destinations: France and Spain, France and Portugal, and Italy and Portugal, while the complementarity effect exists between Greece and Italy, Italy and Portugal, and France and Italy. The successful establishment and application of the TVP-LAIDS models contributes to the methodological development of demand forecasting, not just in tourism, but in any area of economics. The introduction of the single-equation TVP-EC model and the full application of the fixed-parameter EC-LAIDS model fill in the gaps in tourism demand studies. Identification of the interrelationships between alternative destinations provides valuable information for the development of appropriate tourism policies and marketing strategies for the future.