Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Devil's Calculus: Mathematical Models of Civil War

In spite of the movement to turn political science into a real science, various mathematical methods that are now the staples of physics, biology, and even economics are thoroughly uncommon in political science, especially the study of civil war. This study seeks to apply such methods - specifically, ordinary differential equations (ODEs) - to model civil war based on what one might dub the capabilities school of thought, which roughly states that civil wars end only when one side’s ability to make war falls far enough to make peace truly attractive. I construct several different ODE-based models and then test them all to see which best predicts the instantaneous capabilities of both sides of the Sri Lankan civil war in the period from 1990 to 1994 given parameters and initial conditions. The model that the tests declare most accurate gives very accurate predictions of state military capabilities and reasonable short term predictions of cumulative deaths. Analysis of the model reveals the scale of the importance of rebel finances to the sustainability of insurgency, most notably that the number of troops required to put down the Tamil Tigers is reduced by nearly a full order of magnitude when Tiger foreign funding is stopped. The study thus demonstrates that accurate foresight may come of relatively simple dynamical models, and implies the great potential of advanced and currently unconventional non-statistical mathematical methods in political science.
Effect of Intervention Educational Programs on Improving Quality of Life among Overweight/Obese University Students in Gaza Strip

Background: Overweight and obesity are among the most frequently encountered multi-factorial disorders in most populations of the world. In addition, to its health impacts, overweight/obesity leads to many health problems which reflect on the university students’ physical, psychological, social and environmental aspects of their quality of life. The study aim was to evaluate the effect of an educational program on improving quality of life of overweight/obese university students in Gaza strip. Materials and Methods: quasi-experimental nonequivalent pretest-posttest control group design utilized in this study 74 and 69 students in the intervention and control group respectively. The study conducted at Islamic university of Gaza and data were collected in two stages before and after five months from the application of the educational program, using interviewing questionnaire and world health organization quality of life-BREF instrument; pre-post test and body mass index were calculated. Results: the study results revealed that overall students’ knowledge for posttest was significantly higher than pretest (p-value ≤ 0.05). Overall, mean score of quality of life after the program was significantly (p-value = 0.001) greater than before and greater than control group for all domains. Conclusion: The study concluded that the health educational intervention program had positive effects on knowledge, practices and attitudes regarding overweight/obesity with improving university students’ mean score of quality of life.
The Endogenous Amine 1‐Methyl‐1,2,3,4‐ Tetrahydroisoquinoline Prevents the Inhibition of Complex I of the Respiratory Chain Produced by MPP+

Abstract : The endogenous monoamine 1‐methyl‐1,2,3,4‐tetrahydroisoquinoline has been shown to prevent the neurotoxic effect of MPP+ and other endogenous neurotoxins, which produce a parkinsonian‐like syndrome in humans. We have tested its potential protective effect in vivo by measuring the protection of 1‐methyl‐1,2,3,4‐tetrahydroisoquinoline in the neurotoxicity elicited by MPP+ in rat striatum by tyrosine hydroxylase immunocytochemistry. Because we know that cellular damage caused by MPP+ is primarily the result of mitochondrial respiratory inhibition at the complex I level, we have extended the study further to understand this protective mechanism. We found that the inhibitory effect on the mitochondrial respiration rate induced by MPP+ in isolated rat liver mitochondria and striatal synaptosomes was prevented by addition of 1‐methyl‐1,2,3,4‐tetrahydroisoquinoline. This compound has no antioxidant capacity ; therefore, this property is not involved in its protective effect. Thus, we postulate that the preventive effect that 1‐methyl‐1,2,3,4‐tetrahydroisoquinoline has on mitochondrial inhibition for MPP+ could be due to a “shielding effect,” protecting the energetic machinery, thus preventing energetic failure. These results suggest that this endogenous amine may protect against the effect of several parkinsonism‐inducing compounds that are associated with progressive impairment of the mitochondrial function.
Genetic Instabilities of Triplet Repeat Sequences by Recombination

The expansion of triplet repeat sequences is an initial step in the disease etiology of a number of hereditary neurological disorders in humans. Diseases such as myotonic dystrophy, Huntington's, several spinocerebellar ataxias, fragile X syndrome, and Friedreich's ataxia are caused by the expansions of CTG.CAG, CGG.CCG, or GAA.TTC repeats. The mechanisms of the expansion process have been investigated intensely in E. coli, yeast, transgenic mice, mammalian cell culture, and in human clinical cases. Whereas studies from 1994? 1999 have implicated DNA replication and repair at the paused synthesis sites due to the unusual conformations of the triplet repeat sequences, recent work has shown that homologous recombination (gene conversion) is a powerful mechanism for generating massive expansions, in addition to, or in concert with, replication and repair.
Accounting History: Definition and Relevance

This paper defines and relates contemporary applications of accounting history and is intended to assist scholars who do not specialize in historical study. A definitional distinction is drawn between history as a social science, with an emphasis on interpretation, criticism, and method, and history as a descriptive narrative form. Arguments are presented for the relevance of published accounting history studies to accounting pedagogy, policy and practice. The inherent limitations of historical inquiry are also explored. An appendix provides information on accounting history organizations, publications, and activities worldwide. A related paper which develops an accounting historiography will appear in a later issue of this journal.
Phone-Conditioned Suboptimal Wiener Filtering

A novel way of managing the compromise between noise reduction and speech distortion in Wiener filters is presented. It is based on adjusting the amount of noise reduced, and therefore the speech distortion introduced, on a phone-by-phone basis. We show empirically that optimal Wiener filters produce different amounts of speech distortion for different phones. Therefore we propose a phone-conditioned suboptimal Wiener filter that uses different amounts of noise reduction for each phone, based on a previous estimation of the amount of distortion introduced. Speech recognition results have shown that phone conditioning suboptimal Wiener filtering can provide almost a 5% additional relative improvement in word accuracy over comparable optimal Wiener filtering.
A Grading System of Lung Adenocarcinomas Based on Histologic Pattern is Predictive of Disease Recurrence in Stage I Tumors

Currently no objective grading system for pulmonary adenocarcinomas exists. To determine whether specific histologic patterns or combinations thereof could be linked to an objective grading system, the histologic patterns in metastatic tumor deposits was compared with the patterns seen in the corresponding 73 primary tumor to determine whether a specific pattern had higher propensity to metastasize. The concordance of the predominant histologic pattern in the primary tumor and the metastases was of 100% for micropapillary, 86% for solid, 42% for acinar, and 23% for papillary types of adenocarcinoma. Informed by these results, a 3-tier grading system based on the histologic subtypes was established. Grade I, a pattern with low metastatic potential (BAC); Grade II, patterns with intermediate metastatic potential (acinar and papillary); and Grade III, patterns with high metastatic potential (solid and micropapillary). These grades were combined into a number of different scoring systems, whose ability to predict recurrence or death from disease was tested in 366 stage 1 adenocarcinomas. A score based on the 2 most predominant grades was able to stratify patients into low-to-high risk for recurrence or death of disease (P=0.001). The 5-years disease-free survival for patients in the highest score group was of 0.73, compared with 0.84 and 0.92 in the intermediate and lowest score groups. Concordance probability estimate was 0.65 (95% confidence interval 0.57-0.73). Therefore, this scoring system provides valuable information in discriminating patients with different risk of disease-recurrence in a highly homogeneous population of patients with stage I cancer.
The Role of Venture Capital Syndication in Value Creation for Entrepreneurial Firms

This paper provides evidence that venture capital (VC) syndication creates value for entrepreneurial firms in two dimensions. First, VC syndication creates product market value for their portfolio firms. Specifically, VC syndicates invest significant amounts in younger firms, in earlier financing rounds, and in early stage firms. Further, VC syndicates nurture innovation of their portfolio firms and help them achieve better post-initial public offering operating performance. Second, VC syndication creates financial market value for their portfolio firms. Specifically, VC syndicate-backed firms are more likely to have a successful exit, enjoy a lower initial public offering (IPO) underpricing, and receive a higher IPO market valuation. The findings are robust to a variety of alternative syndication measures, subsamples, econometric models, and controlling for endogeneity in VC syndication.
Valuing Publicly Provided Services

Decisions about expenditure on health, education and other publicly provided services require choices regarding how much of our collective income we should allocate to these services and which services should be given priority. The attempt to answer this question has stimulated many developments in economic theory and practice, from human capital theory to systems of extended national accounts. This paper is a brief survey of some of the most important ideas, with reference to their implications for Australian public policy. Copyright 2001 by The Economic Society of Australia.
Asset Pricing in the Presence of Background Risk

We assume an economy in which an agent faces, in addition to uncertainty about the return on risky asset holdings, an independent non-hedgeable zero-mean background risk. Within this framework, the pricing kernel is a function of aggregate consumption per capita and the size of the background risk. The introducing of the independent non-hedgeable background risk in the otherwise standard consumption CAPM enables to break the link between the utility curvature parameter, relative risk aversion to the …nancial investment risk, and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. The proposed model does well in explaining the observed equity premia and risk-free rate.
Are There Differences between Consumers’ and Marketers’ Privacy Expectations? A Segment- and Technology-Level Analysis

Despite previous examinations of business actions, consumer reactions, and regulatory efforts, there has been no direct comparison of consumer and marketer expectations for establishing and respecting privacy boundaries. This study directly compares consumer segments’ and marketers’ expectations for privacy boundaries that regulate marketers’ access to consumers and their information. Using data from a national online survey, the authors compare three consumer segments’ preferences regarding the boundaries for the use of eight information technologies (cookies, biometrics, loyalty cards, radio frequency identification, text messaging, pop-up advertisements, telemarketing, and spam) with survey results of marketing managers and database vendors for the same set of questions. The results identify consumer segments and technologies for which consumer expectations differ from marketers and, thus, for which more regulatory and public policy attention and research scholarship is needed.
Interaction between inhibitory and excitatory synaptic potentials at a peripheral neurone.

1. The interaction between inhibitory and excitatory synaptic potentials in neurones lying in the submucous plexus of guinea‐pig ileum has been examined. 2. It was found that during an inhibitory conductance change, electrotonic potentials were more depressed in amplitude than were excitatory synaptic potentials. 3. It is suggested that inhibitory conductance changes may have only a slight effect on the impedance seen by excitatory synaptic currents as much of the excitatory synaptic current flow is likely to be capacitive. 4. A part of the depression of excitatory synaptic potential amplitude was not associated with changes in electrical properties of neurones and it is suggested that inhibitory transmitter may reduce the release of excitatory transmitter.
Rapid Lane Recognition Based on the Road Region

As people's awareness of safety is enhancing, the intelligent vehicle navigation system is paid more attention. The lane recognition is the main approach used by the navigation technology. The algorithm of extracting the lane region is improved in this paper against the past algorithms with poor real-time. Firstly, this algorithm extracts the road region based on the clear dividing line between the road region and non-road region. And next, the road region is scanned vertically from bottom to up by the scanning algorithm using dichotomy, while the lane regions are also extracted. This algorithm improves the efficiency compared with other scanning algorithms. Lastly, according to the lanes' features the lanes can be further recognized. The experiment results show that this algorithm clearly improves the system's operation efficiency and accuracy.
Enhanced Recognition of Human NK Receptors After Influenza Virus Infection1

The NK cell cytotoxic activity is regulated by both inhibitory and activating NK receptors. Thus, changes in the expression levels and in the affinity or avidity of those receptors will have a major effect on the killing of target cells. In this study, we demonstrate that the binding of NK-inhibitory receptors is enhanced after influenza virus infection. Surprisingly, however, no change in the level of class I MHC protein expression was observed on the surface of the infected cells. The increased binding was general, because it was observed in both the killer cell Ig-like receptor 2 domain long tail 1 and leukocyte Ig-like receptor-1. The increased binding was functional, was not dependent on the interaction with viral hemagglutinin-neuraminidase, was not dependent on the glycosylation site, and was not abolished after mutating the transmembrane or cytosolic portions of the class I MHC proteins. Confocal microscopy experiments showed increased binding of NK receptor-coated beads to infected cells expressing the appropriate class I MHC proteins. In addition, specific cell-free bead aggregates covered with class I MHC proteins were observed only in infected cells. We therefore suggest that the influenza virus use a novel mechanism for the inhibition of NK cell activity. This mechanism probably involves the generation of class I MHC complexes in infected cells that cause increased recognition of NK receptors.
Functional Investigation of Bilateral Posterior Cingulate Gyri Using Multivoxel MR Spectroscopy

The exact functional correlation of each hemisphere’s posterior cingulate gyrus with the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains unknown. We attempted to evaluate the relationship between metabolite ratios in each hemisphere’s posterior cingulate gyrus and cognitive deficits, using multivoxel magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). We recruited 23 patients with AD, 16 patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment and 22 cognitively normal subjects. All patients underwent multivoxel MRS in the bilateral posterior cingulate gyri. We statistically analyzed correlations between the N-acetylaspartate/creatine ratio (NAA/Cr) in each posterior cingulate gyrus and patients’ raw scores on neuropsychological tests. The NAA/Cr of each posterior cingulate gyrus correlated well with the verbal learning test scores on immediate recall and delayed recall tasks. We found that the only cognitive domain to correlate with the NAA/Cr of each posterior cingulate gyrus was verbal memory. Our results did not show any significant functional difference between right and left posterior cingulate gyri.
Protecting Privacy Online: Is Self-Regulation Working?

The author assesses the extent to which 361 consumer-oriented commercial Web sites post disclosures that describe their information practices and whether these disclosures reflect fair information practices. Although approximately 67% of the sites sampled post a privacy disclosure, only 14% of these disclosures constitute a comprehensive privacy policy. The study was initiated by the private sector as a progress report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and is one in a series of efforts designed to assess whether consumer privacy can be protected through industry self-regulation or whether legislation is required. Although the FTC does not recommend legislation at this time, the study suggests that an effective self-regulatory regime for consumer privacy online has yet to emerge.
Factors influencing employment for tertiary education graduates at the selected universities

Th e graduates of tertiary education level are one of the risk groups in the economically active age, who have a signifi cant problem to fi nd a job in the labour market. Th e research has been focused on defi ning the key factors infl uen- cing the creation of competitive advantages of the tertiary education graduates entering labour market as well as to iden- tify the eff ectiveness of these factors in the process of entering the tertiary education graduates in the labour market. Th e methods of analysis were used in the processing of a survey of graduates from three universities of the Czech Republic, namely: the Masaryk University Czech Republic, the Mendel University in Brno, and the Brno University of Technology, at all levels of the higher education degree (Bachelor, Master, PhD) completed by the respondents graduating no earlier than two years ago. Th e data were collected through an online questionnaire, published in the February and March 2013 on the server http://rela.mendelu. cz, at the number of 150 returned fi lled questionnaires. Based on the analysis of secondary sour- ces, there were for the research purposes defi ned fi ve key factors infl uencing the effi ciency of entering the labour market. Th ese factors are the analysis of the current labour market situation and the rational preference of specialization, the active search and participating in programs and the internships focused on gaining the practical experience, the acquisition of professional skills, the use of institutional support and professional assistance and the factor of the building and use of ne- tworking.
Technology adoption under hidden information

We consider a firm where workers have pre-contractual private information regarding their cost of production. Before contracting takes place, the owner of the firm can adopt a new technology that reduces production costs for each type of worker. We show that technology adoption may have an adverse rent effect that counteracts the cost-reducing effect. This is the case whenever the new technology reduces the costs of more efficient types more strongly. Nevertheless, if the owner contracts directly with a worker (two-tier hierarchy), the cost-reducing effect always dominates. By contrast, if the firm has more hierarchical tiers such that contracting with the worker is delegated to a manager, the rent effect may prevail. Then, the owner does not adopt the new technology, even if it is costlessly available.
The Evolution of Income Inequality During the Rise of the Swedish Welfare State 1951 to 1973

We analyse the change in family gross income inequality between 1951 and 1973. We use two new samples of the Swedish population from 1951 and 1956 containing tax register data, and compare the results with those obtained from the Swedish Level of Living survey from 1967 and 1973. Gini coefficients, four different Generalised entropy measures as well as decile group shares of total income are calculated. We also do two different decompositions: one between different demographic groups and one between the male and female component of family income. Finally, we examine to what extent zero family income records really reflect low economic welfare by using interview data from the 1968 Swedish Level of Living Survey.
Hospital Pharmacist's Employee Enggagement Fully Mediate the Organization Culture to Their Innovative Behavior and Individual Performance

Hospital pharmacy as organization comprises several human resource critical issues related to organization success. The aim of the research is to examine relationships between organizational culture, employee engagement, innovative behavior and individual performance. Survey is conducted to 155 hospital pharmacy employees by distributing questions directly or by online survey. Data was analyzed by path analysis. The most distinguishing feature is that relationship from organization culture on innovative behavior and individual performance did not show positive influence by the t-value is below 1.620. However, the finding shows that organizational culture showed positive influence on employee engagement as mediator by the t-value 8.158. From employee engagement to innovative behavior and individual performance showed positive influence by the t-value 2.699 and 3.869. It can be concluded that hospital pharmacy employees’ organization culture showed positive influence on innovative behavior and individual performance through their engagement to the organization. This is proving that from some literatures explained those relationships is worked and also proved by statistic. In contrast, organization culture on both innovative behavior and individual performance did not show positive influence in direct way.
Real time algorithm invariant to natural lighting with LBP techniques through an adaptive thresholding implemented in GPU processors

Video analysis in real time requires fast and efficient algorithms to extract relevant information from a considerable number, commonly 25, of frames per second. Furthermore, robust algorithms for outdoor visual scenes may retrieve correspondent features along the day where a challenge is to deal with lighting changes. Currently, Local Binary Pattern (LBP) techniques are widely used for extracting features due to their robustness to illumination changes and the low requirements for implementation. We propose to compute an automatic threshold based on the distribution of the intensity residuals resulting from the pairwise comparisons when using LBP techniques. The intensity residuals distribution can be modelled by a Generalized Gaussian Distribution (GGD). In this paper we compute the adaptive threshold using the parameters of the GGD. We present a CUDA implementation of our proposed algorithm. We use the LBPSYM technique. Our approach is tested on videos of four different urban scenes with mobilities captured during day and night. The extracted features can be used in a further step to determine patterns, identify objects or detect background. However, further research must be conducted for blurring correction since the scenes at night are commonly blurred due to artificial lighting.