Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Equivalence of Organic Standards as a Signal of Affinity: A Gravity Model of Italian Agricultural Trade

The literature about gravity models stresses that bilateral trade flows among countries are influenced by size of the economy and transaction costs. If compared with the previous literature our article shows a twofold novelty. First, to the best of our knowledge it is the first attempt to analyze the bilateral trade of agricultural goods for Italy by a cross-country and panel analysis in a gravity model, and second, it provides an original specification for transaction costs. In particular, we assume that the level of organic certification standards equivalence between Italy and extra-European countries could represent a good “proxy” for affinity in bilateral trading relationships concerning the agricultural sector both for organic and nonorganic products. Interestingly we find that the absence of specific import equivalence rules between Italy and other extra-European countries decreases the level of bilateral trade. The policy agenda about equivalence of the organic agricultural standards should be tackled in the context of a more complex agenda concerning the affinity of political, cultural, and social practices among different regions in the agricultural sector.
The Evolving External Orientation of Manufacturing: A Profile of Four Countries

Using more than two decades of industry data, the authors profile the external orientation of manufacturing industries in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan. They use the term "external orientation" to describe the potential exposure of an industry's revenues and costs to world events through exports, imports, and imported inputs. For each major manufacturing industry, the authors provide histories of the share of total revenues earned in foreign markets, the role of imports in domestic consumption, and the costs of imported inputs in total production. In addition, they construct a measure of net external orientation, which is intended to capture how much an industry's use of imported inputs (a cost factor) can potentially offset exposure to the international economy through exports (a revenue factor).
Participative Leadership by American and Chinese Managers in China: Role of Relationships

abstract Developing participative leadership may be particularly challenging when managers are working cross-culturally and in China. One hundred and sixty-three Chinese employees from various industries in mainland China were surveyed about their relationships and the effectiveness of their participation with American and Chinese managers. Results, including structural equation analyses, support the hypotheses that cooperative, but not competitive or independent, goals helped Chinese employees and their foreign and Chinese managers strengthen their quality relationships as measured by supervisor–subordinate guanxi and leader–membership exchange; quality relationships in turn enhanced effective participative leadership as measured by the opportunity for joint decision-making and the open-minded discussion of opposing views (constructive controversy). Results suggest that cooperative goals and the Chinese value of guanxi may be important for overcoming obstacles and developing participative leadership within and across cultural boundaries.
Regionalist Party Support for European Integration

A B S T R A C T The relationship between European integration and regionalist parties is still a largely unexplored area of research. In this paper, I evaluate whether regionalist parties perceive the European Union (EU) as an ally or an enemy. Using expert surveys, I assess the views of regionalist parties on European integration and I find that regionalist political parties are consistently pro-EU across time, space, and issue area. I find further support for this finding in a case study of the Scottish National Party.
Suppression of hepatocellular carcinoma development in hepatitis C patients given interferon‐based antiviral therapy

The advance of antiviral treatment for chronic hepatitis C has brought a high sustained virological response (SVR) rate. In this review article, the suppressive effect of interferon (IFN)‐based therapy on the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), risk factors for developing HCC and the characteristics of HCC development after SVR among chronic hepatitis C patients given IFN‐based therapy were studied. The HCC incidence has been revealed to decrease with IFN‐based antiviral therapy, especially in SVR, and the risk factors for developing HCC were older age, advanced liver fibrosis and male sex. α‐Fetoprotein levels at 24 weeks after the end of IFN‐based treatment was associated strongly with HCC incidence irrespective of virological response. In patients with SVR, other risk factors were glucose metabolism disorders, lipid metabolism disorders and alcohol intake. Extra attention to the possibility of HCC incidence should be required for these SVR patients. Antiviral therapy with a combination of HCV‐specific direct‐acting antivirals (DAA) is expected to be utilized in the future. However, it is not known whether DAA‐based treatment can suppress HCC to the level of IFN‐based treatment. Further research is required to clarify this.
Role of Venture Capital in Spurring Innovation and Entrepreneurship

In view of the potential role of venture capital in promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation, USA and many European nations have accorded top priority to the development of venture capital. The literature review of this paper discusses the problems faced by entrepreneurs in rasing funds for innovative projects and it also highlights the role of venture capital in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship. Further using survey method the perspective of entrepreneurs having an innovative project is studied to find the various types of assistance that be provided by a venture capitalist.
Issues in the Design of Monetary Policy Rules

Topics covered in this survey paper include the following: distinguishing rules from discretion in practice; the feasibility of rule-like behavior by an independent central bank; optimal control vs. robustness as research strategies; choice among target variables; growth-rate vs. growing-level target paths; feasibility of interest rate and monetary base instruments; nominal indeterminacy as distinct from solution multiplicity; root-mean-square performance measures with interest rate and monetary base instruments; operationality of rule specifications; stochastic vs. counterfactual historical simulation procedures; interactions between monetary and fiscal policies; and the fiscal theory of the price level.
Frontiers in Australian Tourism: The Search for New Perspectives in Policy Development and Research

The Frontiers in Australian Tourism Conference was held from June 29-July 1 at the Australian National University, Canberra. Jointly organized between the Australian National University's Department of Continuing Education and the Australian Travel Research Workshop, the conference was designed to search for new perspectives in Australian tourism policy and related research issues. The conference had four main objectives. First, to delineate the key policy issues confronting the Australian tourism industry. Second, to identify research priorities and to explore the scope for applying analyticalframeworks and techniques not hitherto applied to Australian tourism problems. Third, to establish a network of researchers in tourism. Fourth, to encourage closer cooperation between Government and industry in developing strategies for sustained tourism development.
A study of the sensitivity of switched-current wave analog filters to mismatching and clock-feedthrough errors

The influence of the main source of errors in Switched-Current (SI) filters over the performance of Wave Analog Filters (WAE) is evaluated. Models of mismatching and clock-feedthrough (CF) are deduced for basic building blocks, and applied to study the sensitivity of a third-order filter. Monte Carlo simulations performed using a behavior simulator prove that CF are dominant over mismatching effects. <<ETX>>
High coupling phononic SH-SAW resonators for in-liquid operation

In this communication we report on initial studies on the in-liquid operation of surface acoustic wave (SAW) phononic resonators employing shear (SH)-SAWs. The mode of operation is a SH-SAW with very high electromechanical coupling, propagating in the X-direction of Y-cut LiNbO3 substrates. Measurements of the resonators immersed in ethylene glycol - water mixtures are presented along with an analysis of the underlying phenomena that determine device sensitivity. We found that the change of electromechanical coupling due to variations in the dielectric permittivity of the liquid becomes a leading contributing factor to device sensitivity. The results of this study are expected to enable the design of a novel class of phononic bio-sensors for lab-on-a-chip applications.
China in the South Pacific: hegemon on the horizon?

Abstract China's influence in the South Pacific appears to be growing rapidly. Some analysts are concerned that China is on its way to replacing the West as the dominant power and China's rise in the region poses a major threat to the West. However, there is no clear evidence to suggest that China's deepening involvement in the South Pacific is a calculated strategic move for its military security. The move can be strategic mainly in the sense that it has strong implications for China's reunification strategy and it serves China's long-term development strategy. The strategic value of the South Pacific to China's national security is limited at present and will remain so in the foreseeable future. China also lacks the military capability to challenge the US-led West in the region in the years to come. Chinese influence in the region is not deep-rooted and is largely based on its ‘no-strings-attached’ aid and its increasing economic interactions with the region. China has serious image problems in the region and these problems are unlikely to be resolved in the near future. China thus has neither the hard power nor the soft power to become a genuine hegemon in the region.
Visual Reasoning with Natural Language

Natural language provides a widely accessible and expressive interface for robotic agents. To understand language in complex environments, agents must reason about the full range of language inputs and their correspondence to the world. Such reasoning over language and vision is an open problem that is receiving increasing attention. While existing data sets focus on visual diversity, they do not display the full range of natural language expressions, such as counting, set reasoning, and comparisons. We propose a simple task for natural language visual reasoning, where images are paired with descriptive statements. The task is to predict if a statement is true for the given scene. This abstract describes our existing synthetic images corpus and our current work on collecting real vision data.
The Innovation Funnel Fallacy

The traditional innovation process - consisting of a funnel coupled with project screening - suffers from several practical shortcomings and flaws. Overemphasis on the role of early stages, such as idea generation, overshadows subsequent phases of equal importance. The drive to feed as many ideas as possible into the funnel may cause congestion that slows down overall progress. Furthermore, the yield may be of low quality if ineffective gates allow too many infertile ideas to pass through the funnel. Processes may be inflexible and slow to react, especially if tied to the corporate planning calendar as often proposed. This is not to imply that these problems are inherent; they are instead the consequences of poor practices.The authors discuss the disadvantages and suggest an alternative to overcome them. The proposed approach is driven by strategic business options and also introduces additional benefits. It produces savings in sunk costs and prematurely tied-up capital. It contributes to effective and ec.
University spin‐offs and local business support infrastructure in a post‐socialist economy

This paper compares formal and informal modes of cooperation between SMEs in the post‐socialist transitional economy of Poland. It describes how small firms in a university environment utilise their networks of social relations to cope with some of the problems typical for SMEs in a post‐socialist transitional economy. Moreover, the paper gives a brief account of how successful similar firms are supported by the newly developing business support infrastructure. The data for this paper derive from a larger PhD project on networking in a transitional economy and are based on semi‐structured interviews with entrepreneurs and representatives of organisations who were selected using the snowballing method. The paper looks at two groups of firms that were established by academics from technical universities in two western Polish regions. It compares these structures with formal policy initiatives in the two regions, which aim to support similar firms. The evidence shows how personal contacts remained both between the technical universities and the firms as well as between the individual firms. The use of these interpersonal relations can lead to an effective means of knowledge transfer between universities and the business sphere and can also serve as problem‐solving mechanisms for the small business. The organisation of the business support infrastructure, on the other hand, seem to be rather unsuccessful in addressing the problems of such university spin‐offs. The problems of acceptance and credibility that these bodies encounter are mainly rooted in the reluctance of private entrepreneurs to get involved with public or quasi‐public institutions, which in turn is a result of socialist legacies.
Bioactivity of Rosmarinus officinalis essential oils against Apis mellifera, Varroa destructor and Paenibacillus larvae related to the drying treatment of the plant material

In this study, chemical composition, physicochemical properties and bioactivity of two essential oils of Rosmarinus officinalis extracted from plant material with different drying treatments against Apis mellifera, Varroa destructor and Paenibacillus larvae were assessed. The lethal concentration 50 (LC50) for mites and bees was estimated using a complete exposure method test. The broth microdilution method was followed in order to determine the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of the essential oils against P. larvae. Physicochemical properties were similar in both the essential oils, but the percentage of components showed certain differences according to their drying treatment. β-Myrcene and 1,8-cineole were the main constituents in the oils. The LC50 for complete exposure method at 24, 48 and 72 h was minor for mites exposed to R. officinalis essential oil dried in oven conditions. MIC values were 700–800 µg mL−1 and 1200 µg mL−1 for R. officinalis dried in air and oven conditions, respectively. The results reported in this research show that oil toxicity against V. destructor and P. larvae differed depending on the drying treatment of the plant material before the distillation of essential oil.
Memory for Pain: The Relationship of Pain Catastrophizing to the Recall of Daily Rheumatoid Arthritis Pain

ObjectiveThe assumption that individuals are capable of accurately recalling past painful experiences has been a fundamental tenet of a number of cognitive–behavioral theories of pain, including the gate control theory. However, there has been very little research on the topic in the past, and the results have often been contradictory. A general conclusion that can be drawn is that memory for pain is variable, and there is need to identify what factors contribute to this variability in memory for pain. The current study examined the relation of catastrophizing to the recall of persistent pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis. MethodsParticipants in this study were 45 individuals with persistent pain due to rheumatoid arthritis. Each participant was asked to complete a daily pain diary for a period of 30 days. Participants were subsequently asked to recall the pain they experienced over the entire period of time rather than provide a single, average rating. ResultsThe results of a series of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that level of catastrophizing was related to the recall of both pain intensity and pain variability. This relation was statistically significant even after controlling for actual pain and variability and other background variables. ConclusionsParticipants who scored higher on catastrophizing demonstrated better accuracy in the recall of general pain intensity and pattern over a 30-day diary period. The results of the study are discussed in terms of future studies as well as their potential clinical importance.
Accurate and Efficient Self-Calibration Algorithm of Broadband On-Wafer Scattering-Parameter Measurements for Production Test Applications Up to 110 GHz

This paper presents an accurate and efficient on-wafer calibration algorithm of broadband scattering-parameter measurements for radio-frequency integrated circuit production test applications. Three on-chip calibration standards with the same probe positions as those of the devices under test (DUTs) were designed to take advantage of fixed probe heads in the x–y directions during calibration and measurements. In addition, three on-chip standards—a series resistor and a shunt resistor (both of which have an offset line segment) as well as a transmission line (TL)—do not have to be characterized in advance, and the measurement reference impedance can be acquired further though self-calibration without an impedance-standard substrate (ISS). Simulation studies and experimental confirmation were conducted on GaAs substrates, from 2 to 110 GHz, in addition to comparisons of the multiline thru-reflect-line (TRL) calibration results.
HRM and strategic climates in hospitals: does the message come across at the ward level?

This study examined how employees perceive intended strategic goals and HRM at the ward level, and if these perceptions generate the desired effects. The qualitative part of the research reveals that the hospital pursues two strategic goals (i.e. quality and safety). Analysis of the questionnaire data (N = 576 respondents; 59 wards) shows that both climate dimensions could be distinguished. Results showed that the perceived HR system does have a significant influence on both climate dimensions, suggesting that the overall message of the HR system is important for creating strategic climates. Furthermore, the climate for quality partially mediated the relationship between the perceived HR system and commitment.
MEASUREMENT ISSUES IN THE TRAVEL COST METHOD: A GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPROACH

A review of the travel cost (TC) literature shows that the base measurements of travel time and distance underpinning many studies are often obtained via crude simplifications. This paper presents an application of the TC method conducted using geographical information system (GIS) software. This permits superior measurement of both travel time and distance providing a more accurate and realistic basis for valuations.
Quantitation of CD8+ T-Lymphocyte Responses to Multiple Epitopes from Simian Virus 40 (SV40) Large T Antigen in C57BL/6 Mice Immunized with SV40, SV40 T-Antigen-Transformed Cells, or Vaccinia Virus Recombinants Expressing Full-Length T Antigen or Epitope Minigenes

ABSTRACT The cytotoxic T-lymphocyte response to wild-type simian virus 40 large tumor antigen (Tag) in C57BL/6 (H2b ) mice is directed against three H2-Db -restricted epitopes, I, II/III, and V, and oneH2-Kb -restricted epitope, IV. Epitopes I, II/III, and IV are immunodominant, while epitope V is immunorecessive. We investigated whether this hierarchical response was established in vivo or was due to differential expansion in vitro by using direct enumeration of CD8+ T lymphocytes with Tag epitope/major histocompatibility complex class I tetramers and intracellular gamma interferon staining. The results demonstrate that epitope IV-specific CD8+ T cells dominated the Tag-specific response in vivo following immunization with full-length Tag while CD8+ T cells specific for epitopes I and II/III were detected at less than one-third of this level. The immunorecessive nature of epitope V was apparent in vivo, since epitope V-specific CD8+ T cells were undetectable following immunization with full-length Tag. In contrast, high levels of epitope V-specific CD8+ T lymphocytes were recruited in vivo following immunization and boosting with a Tag variant in which epitopes I, II/III, and IV had been inactivated. In addition, analysis of the T-cell receptor β (TCRβ) repertoire of Tag epitope-specific CD8+ cells revealed that multiple TCRβ variable regions were utilized for each epitope except Tag epitope II/III, which was limited to TCRβ10 usage. These results indicate that the hierarchy of Tag epitope-specific CD8+T-cell responses is established in vivo.
Label-Related/Unrelated Topic Switching Model: A Partially Labeled Topic Model Handling Infinite Label-Unrelated Topics

We propose a Label-Related/Unrelated Topic Switching Model (LRU-TSM) based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for modeling a labeled corpus. In this model, each word is allocated to a label-related topic or a label-unrelated topic. Label-related topics utilize label information, and label-unrelated topics utilize the framework of Bayesian Nonparametrics, which can estimate the number of topics in posterior distributions. Our model handles label-related and -unrelated topics explicitly, in contrast to the earlier model, and improves the performances of applications to which is applied. Using real-world datasets, we show that our model outperforms the earlier model in terms of perplexity and efficiency for label prediction tasks that involve predicting labels for documents or pictures without labels.
A Model of Reputation in Cheap Talk

We study a dynamic game of advice where the sender's preferences are unknown to the receiver. The novel feature of the model is that there is more than one type of biased sender. We show that the more equal the proportions of different biases in the sender population, the greater the credibility of the information transmitted. Somewhat surprisingly, however, we also find that the receiver does not benefit from this equality. We discuss our results in the context of political lobbying and show that institutions that increase transparency lower lobbyists' incentives for truthtelling, but unambiguously promote the policymaker's welfare.
Technology Transfer between Technology Centres and SMEs: Evidence from the Basque Country

Public policies (often at the regional level) favouring pre-competitive research and cooperative research and development have played a decisive role in the development of technology centres in Europe and all over the world. The technology offer model gave priority to the creation of technology transfer organizations and structures, but there is increasing evidence that this model did not attach enough attention to the needs of small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and in particular, to their capacity to take in knowledge. In this paper, based on qualitative research, we show in detail some of the main issues involved in the relationships between technology centres and SMEs in the Basque Country, a region that has developed intensive policies favouring technology transfer organizations over the years.