Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The economic progress of African Americans in urban areas: a tale of 14 cities

How significant was the economic progress of African Americans in the United States between 1970 and 2000? In this paper the authors examine this issue for black men 25 to 55 years of age who live in 14 large U.S. metropolitan areas. They present the evidence that significant racial disparities remain in education and labor market outcomes of black and white men, and they discuss changes in industrial composition, migration, and demography that might have contributed to the stagnation of economic progress of black men between 1970 and 2000. In addition, the authors show that there was no progress in the financial well-being of black children, relative to white children, between 1970 and 2000.
THE ECONOMIC ADVANTAGE OF LONGEVITY IN THE DAIRY COW

An adaptive stochastic dynamic programming model is described which solves the optimum replacement decision problem for the dairy cow under physical and financial assumptions currently typical for the UK. By expressing the expected net present value of the replacement heifer as an annuity equivalent under various assumptions with and without enforced (involuntary) culling an estimate of the value of longevity was obtained and an assessment made of its sensitivity to key assumptions. Increased longevity added about $20 per extra lactation per year on to the investment potential of the replacement dairy heifer under the assumptions made. This figure is sensitive to replacement cost, but could be used to provide economic values for longevity as part of an economic breeding objective for dairy cattle in the UK.
Interest Rates, Contagion and Capital Controls

In this paper I analyze several issues related to contagion,' including its definition, recent experiences, alternative channels at work, and possible prevention mechanisms. The discussion deals with the macroeconomics implications of contagion, and concentrates on the relationship between the degree of openness of the capital account and the transmission of foreign shocks. More specifically, I ask whether restrictions to capital mobility and, in particular, controls on capital inflows of the type Chile implemented throughout most of the 1990s reduce a country's vulnerability to contagion. I also deal, albeit briefly, with the connection between the exchange rate regime and the propagation of international shocks. The evidence presented in this paper shows that the effectiveness of Chile's controls on inflows has often been overstated. Indeed, Chile was severely affected by the East Asian, Russian and Brazilian crises.
The polymorphic nature of party membership

The article argues that party member activity differs in terms of the degree, type and quality of organizational involvement, a fact often ignored in comparative studies of party membership as well as in arguments about the democratic potential of political parties. The article first presents different perspectives adopted in the literature on party membership. Distinctions are made on the one hand between research treating membership as an independent or as a dependent variable, and on the other between research focusing on different levels of analysis - the country, the organization and the individual. To develop some empirical implications of these points, a survey of Norwegian party members is discussed in the second part. The emphasis here lies on the members'level of party activity and how to explain it. The conclusion is that whether or not the low level of member activity found in Norwegian parties is seen as a problem depends on which normative model of democracy is taken as a point of reference.
Accounting Earning, Book Value and Cash Flow in Equity Valuation: An Empirical Study on CNX NIFTY Companies

Way back in 1934, Graham and Dodd observed the importance of earning power in investment theory. According to them, history of actual earning with a reasonable expectation should be approximated in future. The empirical study of Ball and Brown (1968) contends that of all the sources of information as regards the working of a firm during a year, income number reported in the annual income statement captures one-half or more. In the backdrop of relevance of accounting numbers for equity valuation, Feltham and Ohlson (1995) and Ohlson (1995) provide an objective valuation model based on abnormal earning. According to the models, the fundamental of valuation depends on abnormal earning—an autoregressive process of the first order [AR(1)] that is related to the abnormal earning of the previous period. Along with abnormal earning there may be other variables like book value of the equity, operating cash flow, accruals and other information (all of them being autoregressive, AR(1), processes) can be usedseverally and jointly for predicting equity value. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to test the forecasting ability of equity share value of CNX NIFTY companies of the National Stock Exchange of India empirically for a period of 10 years (1999-2008) by pooling cross-sectional data on abnormal earning, book value and operating cash flow in line with the forecasting and valuation equation models of Feltham and Ohlson (1995) and Ohlson (1995). The findings suggest that abnormal earning, book value and operating cash flow component of earning respectively follow an autoregressive process. Information on abnormal earning and book value aids in predicting equity value. The findings are consistent with Ohlson’s model.
Moving Beyond the Gentrification Gaps: Social Change, Tenure Change and Gap Theories in Stockholm

Production-side theories of gentrification are generally confined to the rent and value gaps. In Stockholm, the value gap, involving tenure conversions from rental to co-operative ownership, is usually cited as the primary gentrification mechanism. However, results described here indicate that gentrification has taken place in rental properties even prior to tenure conversion. Together with the small number of conversions taking place, this means that the value-gap mechanism is of limited importance. It is suggested that mechanisms operating within the rental sector, such as 'luxury renovations' and the housing allocation process, are more significant in Stockholm, and that gap theories are of little relevance. More generally, explanations of gentrification in a mixed economy such as that of Sweden need to look beyond traditional theories.
The Road Less Driven

Abstract Americans gain tremendous benefits from their driving in the form of access to opportunities. But the benefits do not come without burdens, for individuals and for society. To manage those burdens, transportation planners should focus on strategies that selectively reduce driving in two ways: by making it possible to drive less through land use policies and investments in non-auto infrastructure, and by discouraging less important driving with pricing policies. But merely layering a “drive less” approach on top of traditional efforts to make driving easier doesn't make sense. A more effective blend of strategies is needed.
Perinatal Resveratrol Supplementation to Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat Dams Mitigates the Development of Hypertension in Adult Offspring

The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) is a model of essential hypertension in which high blood pressure (BP) develops after 7 wks of age. Altered vascular resistance profiles and renal hemodynamics are evident by 3 wks of age, implicating these early functional changes as a cause, rather than a consequence, of hypertension in this model. As such, the developmental period before weaning may constitute a critical time for therapeutic intervention.
CD40 Ligand-Dependent T Cell Activation: Requirement of B7-CD28 Signaling Through CD40

The role of CD40 ligand (CD40L) in the primary activation of T cells is not clear. The cellular and humoral immune responses to adenoviral vectors in a murine model of liver-directed gene transfer were studied to define the mechanisms responsible for CD40L-dependent T cell priming. CD40L-deficient mice did not develop effective cytotoxic T cells to transduced hepatocytes, and T cell-dependent B cell responses were absent. Full reconstitution of cellular and humoral immunity was achieved in CD40L-deficient mice by administration of an activating antibody to CD40 that increased expression of B7.2 on spleen cells. Wild-type mice could be made nonresponsive to vector by administration of antibodies to B7. Thus, CD40L-dependent activation of T cells occurs through signaling of CD40 in the antigen-presenting cell to enhance requisite costimulatory pathways that include B7.
Body and intestinal growth of broiler chicks on a commercial starter diet. 3. Development and characteristics of tryptophan transport

1. A study was conducted to characterise the development of amino acid transport in broiler chicks, using L-tryptophan as a model. The chicks were maintained on a broiler starter diet between hatch and 21 d of age. 2. There was a significant reduction in the rate of uptake of 0.04 mML-tryptophan with age in both the jejunum and ileum. Uptake was enhanced in the presence of 50 mM sodium chloride to different degrees depending on age and intestinal site. At both intestinal sites, uptake capacity increased with age while there was a reduction in uptake efficiency with age. 3. At a concentration of 25 mM, both sodium chloride and potasium chloride increased uptake by ileal brush-border membrane vesicles (BBMV) of 7-d-old chicks but uptake was reduced when potassium chloride was included at a concentration of 50 mM. In the presence of valinomycin, uptake by jejunal BBMV was stimulated by 25 mM sodium chloride. In the presence of both sodium chloride and potassium chloride and in the absence of valinomycin, uptake was increased by 42.6% but this was reduced to 23.4% when the ionophore was included in the buffer. 4. The Na+-independent uptake of L-tryptophan into jejunal vesicles of 21-d-old chicks was lower in the presence of D-tryptophan than in the presence of 2-aminobicyclo-{2,2,1}-heptane-2-carboxylic acid (BCH). The inclusion of BCH in the incubation medium at low concentrations significantly enhanced the uptake of 0.04 mM L-tryptophan by jejunal BBMV. 5. At similar concentration (0.04 mM) to L-tryptophan, lysine, methionine and alanine in the presence of Na + also stimulated L-tryptophan uptake. The uptake of L-tryptophan was reduced at a higher concentration, 25 mM, of these amino acids. 6. The study revealed a decline in rate of amino acid uptake and an increase in total uptake capacity with age. Tryptophan uptake was both Na + -independent and dependent, and occurred more in the ileum than in the jejunum. The uptake of L-tryptophan depended on the concentration of other amino acids and other factors in the diet and digesta.
Introduction: Recent Trends in Social Economy Research

International research on the social economy has undergone three important changes over the last five years. Firstly, the socioeconomic reality subject of this research has suffered a profound transformation as a result of the impact and the prolongation of the crisis and the expectations created in relation to the role of the social economy. Secondly, the topics under scrutiny by the scientific community have changed gradually over these years adapting to the macro and micromutations being studied. Thirdly, we have witnessed what may be considered the definitive consolidation and institutionalization of research into the social economy and its scientific community. This latter is confirmed by the prolific and diversified scientific output, the recognition of the specialized scientific journals, the solidity of the international networks of researchers and research centres and specialist training, as well as by the existence of periodic international scientific conferences.
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability

The authors review three theoretical approaches to strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR), which can be defined as voluntary CSR actions that enhance a firm’s competitiveness and reputation. The end result of such activities should be an improvement in financial and economic performance. Based on an overview of recent empirical evidence, the authors conclude that economic theories of strategic CSR have the greatest potential for advancing this field of inquiry, although theories of strategic leadership should also be incorporated into this perspective. In the remainder of the article, they provide focused summaries of the articles presented in this special issue and outline an agenda for future research on strategic CSR and environmental sustainability.
The dose-range effects of propofol on the contractility of fatigued diaphragm in dogs.

UNLABELLED Diaphragmatic fatigue may contribute to the development of respiratory failure. We studied the dose-range effects of propofol on the contractility of fatigued diaphragm in dogs. Animals were divided into three groups of eight each. In each group, diaphragmatic fatigue was induced by intermittent supramaximal bilateral electrophrenic stimulation at a frequency of 20-Hz stimulation for 30 min. Immediately after the end of a fatigue-producing period, Group 1 received no study drug; Group 2 was infused with small-dose propofol (0.1 mg/kg initial dose plus 1.5 mg x kg(-1) x h(-1) maintenance dose); Group 3 was infused with large-dose propofol (0.1 mg/kg initial dose plus 6.0 mg x kg(-1) x h(-1) maintenance dose). We assessed diaphragmatic contractility by transdiaphragmatic pressure (Pdi). After the fatigue-producing period, in each group, Pdi at low-frequency (20-Hz) stimulation decreased from baseline values (P < 0.05), whereas there was no change in Pdi at high-frequency (100-Hz) stimulation. In Groups 2 and 3, with an infusion of propofol, Pdi at 20-Hz stimulation decreased from fatigued values (P < 0.05). Compared with Group 1, Pdi at 20-Hz stimulation decreased from fatigued values (P < 0.05) during propofol administration in Groups 2 and 3. The decrease in Pdi was more in Group 3 than in Group 2 (P < 0.05). We conclude that propofol decreases the contractility of fatigued canine diaphragm in a dose-related fashion. IMPLICATIONS Propofol is a widely used IV anesthetic for the induction and maintenance of general anesthesia and sedation. It decreases, in a dose-related fashion, the contractility of fatigued diaphragm in dogs.
Judging the Behavior of People We Know

The present study investigates the relative extent to which judgments of people’s behavior are influenced by “truth” (as measured by averaged observer-judgments) and by systematic bias (i.e., perceivers’ preexisting views of target persons). Using data from online questionnaires and laboratory sessions (N = 155), we demonstrate that self- and peer-judgments of people’s actual behavior in specific situations are somewhat accurate but are also affected by what perceivers thought of the targets before observing their behavior. The latter effect comprises a general evaluative component (generally positive or negative views of targets) and a content-specific component (views of targets in terms of specific characteristics, for example, “restrained”). We also found that friends, but not targets themselves, tend to judge targets’ behaviors more positively than unacquainted observers do. The relevance of these findings for person perception in everyday life and in research contexts is discussed.
Quiet Period (QP) Scheduling Across Heterogeneous Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA)-Based Systems

Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is a promising technology to improve spectrum utilization. One key issue in DSA is the protection of primary devices from interference caused by secondary devices. In this paper, we discuss this issue in the context of spectrum sensing. Sensing problems resulting from collocated sensing and non-sensing secondary systems — together referred to as heterogeneous DSA systems — are identified and a novel quiet period (QP) scheduling algorithm is proposed. The algorithm guarantees a sensing secondary system to detect returning primary devices in bounded time, without any communication or synchronization with collocated non-sensing secondary systems. We prove the guarantee via mathematical induction and analyze the performance. The algorithm is implemented in a universal software radio peripheral (USRP)-based test bed to demonstrate its feasibility. The results show that our solution is applicable to heterogeneous IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area networks (WRANs), ECMA-392 wireless personal area network (WPANs), and even the future IEEE 802.11af wireless local area networks (WLANs) in the UHF TV bands.
The canine model of dietary hypersensitivity

IgE-mediated dietary hypersensitivity affects approximately 1% of the canine population. There are no breed associations and ≤50% of the patients are aged <1 year at presentation. The most common causative allergens are beef, chicken, milk, eggs, maize, wheat and soyabean. Affected dogs generally display cutaneous disease and 10–15% of the patients may have concurrent alimentary involvement. Diagnosis is currently based on dietary restriction followed by provocation. Procedures for the detection of serum allergen-specific IgE and IgG antibodies are widely available, but these tests correlate poorly with clinical presentation and dietary testing. Recent studies have demonstrated the allergen specificity of IgE antibodies by immunoblotting and have described blood lymphocyte proliferative responses to food allergens. In addition to investigations of spontaneously-arising dietary hypersensitivity, it has also proved possible to study this disorder experimentally. Small colonies of dogs sensitive to particular dietary proteins have been used to study clinical and serological responses to allergen challenge. Hypersensitivity has been experimentally induced in dogs of an atopic phenotype by repeated subcutaneous injection of alum-adjuvanted dietary allergen during neonatal life. These models have been used to trial a range of modified protein or hydrolysate diets. The dog provides a unique large-animal model for investigation of the immunopathogenesis of human dietary hypersensitivity. The dog is closely related genetically to man and shares environmental disease triggers with man. Spontaneously arising canine dietary hypersensitivity is a good clinical mimic of the human disease, and ability to therapeutically manipulate this adverse response in the dog might lead to benefits for human patients.
TEX-Nets: Binary Patterns Encoded Convolutional Neural Networks for Texture Recognition

Recognizing materials and textures in realistic imaging conditions is a challenging computer vision problem. For many years, local features based orderless representations were a dominant approach for texture recognition. Recently deep local features, extracted from the intermediate layers of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), are used as filter banks. These dense local descriptors from a deep model, when encoded with Fisher Vectors, have shown to provide excellent results for texture recognition. The CNN models, employed in such approaches, take RGB patches as input and train on a large amount of labeled images. We show that CNN models, which we call TEX-Nets, trained using mapped coded images with explicit texture information provide complementary information to the standard deep models trained on RGB patches. We further investigate two deep architectures, namely early and late fusion, to combine the texture and color information. Experiments on benchmark texture datasets clearly demonstrate that TEX-Nets provide complementary information to standard RGB deep network. Our approach provides a large gain of 4.8%, 3.5%, 2.6% and 4.1% respectively in accuracy on the DTD, KTH-TIPS-2a, KTH-TIPS-2b and Texture-10 datasets, compared to the standard RGB network of the same architecture. Further, our final combination leads to consistent improvements over the state-of-the-art on all four datasets.
Determinants of SME brand adaptation in global marketing

Previous studies have focused on the degree of standardisation or adaptation and, to a lesser extent, on the determinants of adaptation. This paper advances the literature in four respects. Firstly, we are able to evaluate the relative importance of internal (commitment, experience) versus external (culture, economic) determinants of adaptation. Secondly, we have examined several firm size categories, so we can evaluate how the relative roles of internal and external factors vary by firm size. Thirdly, rather than treat adaptation as one of adjusting one or more of the four Ps, we use a more holistic concept of adaptation, namely brand adaptation, which subsumes marketing mix adaptation. A scale has been developed to capture this holistic concept. Fourthly, we have developed a new culture scale, one based on the perceptions of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) businesses, using domestic operations as a benchmark.
Open Capital Account: Concrete Wealth or Paper Wealth

Empirical evidence shows that capital inflows are often used by developing countries to finance excessive consumption. The existing literature explains these phenomena as resulting from institutional imperfections. In contrast, we argue that they can be fundamental outcomes of open capital account, under which ineffectiveness in using foreign savings for investments tends to result in capital inflows being channeled to consumption through wealth effect. Our analysis shows that, while risk aversion causes low investment elasticity and hence reduces the total benefit of capital account liberalization for society over time, it nevertheless tends to increase the benefit enjoyed by current generations and hence drive consumption booms. We show that the proportion of capital inflows used for financing consumption is negatively correlated with investment elasticity. We show that a positive yet uncertain future productivity shock is likely to cause consumption booms because of sluggish investment reactions. Our analysis shows that, the greater the expected future productivity is; or the greater the uncertainty is; the stronger the consumption booms will be. (JEL F21 F32 F41 F43)
Brucella melitensis 16MΔhfq attenuation confers protection against wild‐type challenge in BALB/c mice

Brucellosis is a globally distributed zoonotic disease that causes animal and human diseases. Although effective, the current Brucella vaccines (Rev.1 and M5‐90) have several drawbacks. The first involves residual virulence for animals and humans and the second is the inability to differentiate natural infection from that caused by vaccination. Therefore, Brucella melitensis 16M hfq mutant (16MΔhfq) was constructed to overcome these drawbacks. Similarly to Rev.1 and M5‐90, 16MΔhfq reduces survival in macrophages and mice and induces strong protective immunity in BALB/c mice. Moreover, these vaccines elicit anti‐Brucella‐specific IgG1 and IgG2a subtype responses and induce secretion of gamma interferon and interleukin‐4. The Hfq antigen also allows serological differentiation between infected and vaccinated animals. These results show that 16MΔhfq is an ideal live attenuated vaccine candidate against virulent Brucella melitensis 16M infection. It will be further evaluated in sheep.