Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Government Size and Unemployment: Evidence from Developing Countries

Using data from 58 countries and the period 1980 to 2003, this paper analyzes how the size of government affects unemployment in developing countries. According to the regression results, a large government sector is likely to increase unemployment. A large share of government consumption in total consumption and a large share of transfers and subsidies in GDP most clearly appear to have a detrimental effect. By contrast, we do not find evidence that dominant state-owned enterprises and a large share of public investment in total investment affect unemployment, neither for bad nor for good. The results are robust to variations in specification and estimation method.
Economic Efficiency and Irrigation Water Policy with an Example from Egypt

Irrigation water policies can be enhanced by considering the economic dimensions of farm-level decisions and public goals regarding limited land and water resources. The definitions of three efficiency terms used to describe the performance of irrigation systems-irrigation, water use and economic efficiency-are reviewed, with a focus on the unique role of economic efficiency in policy analysis. Policies that modify economic parameters can motivate farmers to choose crops and irrigation methods that are consistent with public goals. Such policies include water prices or allotments, subsidies for improving irrigation methods, and the removal of output price distortions that favour crops with large water requirements in water-short regions. An example of economic issues regarding water policy in the Nile Valley and Delta is included.
Betriebliche Ausbildung und soziale Ungleichheit

Zusammenfassung Die betriebliche Ausbildung im dualen System bildet nach wie vor das Kernstuck des deutschen Berufsbildungssystems. Traditionell gilt sie auch als ein entscheidender gesellschaftlicher Integrationsfaktor. In den letzten Jahren wird ihre Funktionsfahigkeit aber zunehmend in Frage gestellt. Oft ubersehen wird dabei die grose Heterogenitat im Berufsbildungssystem. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Uberblick uber wichtige soziale Ungleichheiten, welche mit beruflicher Ausbildung verbunden sind. Dabei werden insbesondere Aspekte einer Lebensverlaufsperspektive betont. Tragt die betriebliche Ausbildung insgesamt zur Reduktion sozialer Ungleichheiten bei? Eine einfache Antwort auf diese Frage gibt es nicht, da sich die relevanten Ungleichheiten sowohl auf interne Differenzierungen als auch externe Relationen des Ausbildungssystems beziehen. Firm-Based Vocational Training and Social Inequality Apprenticeship training in the dual system continues to be the core of the German vocational training .
Effects of female labour force attachment on health in Australia

This study examines the impact of female labour force attachment on health in Australia, where health care is socially provided. Longitudinal panel data from Women’s Health Australia is used in a metric analysis to capture the impact of labour market attachment on the physical component health score of relatively young and older female workers. After controlling for the healthy worker effect – wherein firms hire and retain the healthiest workers – and other health‐related changes in socio‐economic status, the analysis suggests that even a moderate attachment to the paid labour force has benevolent effects on health relative to no or marginal attachment. Given the existing social structure in Australia, remunerative work generally appears to enhance the health of young women and arrest the decline of health for older female workers.
Sex Differences, Financial Education, and Retirement Goals

This chapter examines the impact of participation in financial education seminars on the desired retirement age of individuals and on their expected levels of retirement income. Individuals were found to change their retirement goals after attendance in such a seminar. In addition, participants also reported that they planned to change their retirement saving behavior based on knowledge gained at the seminar. Women were much more likely to alter their retirement goals and saving behavior. Using information on seminars conducted by TIAA-CREF, and survey data on the participants, the authors estimate the determinants of changes in retirement goals and saving behavior.
Monetization of Nigeria Coal by Conversion to Hydrocarbon Fuels through Fischer-Tropsch Process

Abstract Given the instability of crude oil prices and the disruptions in crude oil supply chains, this article offers a complementing investment proposal through diversification of Nigeria's energy source and dependence. Therefore, the following issues were examined and reported: A comparative survey of coal and hydrocarbon reserve bases in Nigeria was undertaken and presented. An excursion into the economic, environmental, and technological justifications for the proposed diversification and roll-back to coal-based resource was also undertaken and presented. The technology available for coal beneficiation for environmental pollution control was reviewed and reported. The Fischer-Tropsch synthesis bothering on the process chemistry and its advances into Sasol's slurry phase distillate process (sspdp) was reviewed. Specifically, the adoption of Sasol's advanced synthol process (sasp) and the slurry phase distillate process were recommended as ways of processing the products of coal gasification. The article concludes by discussing all the above-mentioned issues with regard to value addition as a means of wealth creation and investment.
Quality Education Management in self-funded Post Secondary Education Institutions in Hong Kong

Abstract This article discusses the management of external validation exercises (academic audit). Such exercises are now seen as providing an important means for assessing the quality of education in self-funded Post Secondary Education Institutions in Hong Kong, and therefore careful preparation for them is essential. Relevant individual's implicit/tacit knowledge has been converted to explicit knowledge for organizational formal transfer. Ten implementation strategies for the achievement of key performance results are proposed, and a check list of twenty tasks is formulated, against which institutions might assess their level of achievement and evaluate their readiness for external validation.
Places and Spaces of Sustainability Transitions: Geographical Contributions to an Emerging Research and Policy Field

LARS COENEN∗∗∗ & BERNHARD TRUFFER ∗CIRCLE: Centre for Research, Innovation and Competence in the Learning Economy, Lund University, Box 117, 22100 Lund, Sweden, ∗∗NIFU: Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education, Wergelandsveien 7, 0167 Oslo, Norway, CIRUS: Centre for Innovation Research in Utility Sectors, EAWAG, Dübendorf, Switzerland, Department of Geography, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
A Comparative Revenue Analysis of Hotel Yield Management Heuristics

Yield management is the dynamic pricing, overbooking, and allocation of perishable assets across market segments in an effort to maximize short-term revenues for the firm. Numerous optimization heuristics for allocation and overbooking exist for the airline industry, whose perishable asset is the airplane seat. When an airplane departs, no revenue is gained from the empty seat(s). In the hotel industry, the perishable asset is the hotel room-once a room is left empty for a night, that night's revenue cannot be recaptured. The literature on yield management heuristics for the hotel industry is sparse. For the hotel operating environment, no research has adequately (1) integrated overbooking with allocation, (2) modeled the phenomenon of hotel patrons extending or contracting their stay at a moment's notice, or (3) performed a realistic performance comparison of alternative heuristics. This research develops (1) two hotel-specific algorithms that both integrate overbooking with the allocation decisions, (2) a simulation model to reproduce realistic hotel operating environments, and (3) compares the performance of five heuristics under 36 realistic hotel operating environments. Seven conclusions are reached with regard to which heuristic(s) perform best in specific operating environments. Generally, heuristic selection is very much dependent on the hotel operating environment. A counterintuitive result is that in many operating environments, the simpler heuristics work as well as the more complex ones.
Effects of Organic Acid Anions on the Growth and Metabolism of Syntrophomonas wolfei in Pure Culture and in Defined Consortia

The effects of organic acid anions on the growth of Syntrophomonas wolfei was determined by varying the initial concentration of the acid anion in the medium. The addition of 15 mM acetate decreased the growth rate of a butyrate-catabolizing coculture containing Methanospirillum hungatei from 0.0085 to 0.0029 per hour. Higher initial acetate concentrations decreased the butyrate degradation rate and the yield of cells of S. wolfei per butyrate degraded. Inhibition was not due to the counter ion or the effect of acetate on the methanogen. Initial acetate concentrations above 25 mM inhibited crotonate-using pure cultures and cocultures of S. wolfei. Benzoate and lactate inhibited the growth of S. wolfei on crotonate in pure culture and coculture. Lactate was an effective inhibitor of S. wolfei cultures at concentrations greater than 10 mM. High concentrations of acetate and lactate altered the electron flow in crotonate-catabolizing cocultures, resulting in the formation of less methane and more butyrate and caproate. The inclusion of the acetate-using methanogen, Methanosarcina barkeri, in a methanogenic butyrate-catabolizing coculture increased both the yield of S. wolfei cells per butyrate degraded and the efficacy of butyrate degradation. Butyrate degradation by acetate-inhibited cocultures occurred only after the addition of Methanosarcina barkeri. These results showed that the metabolism of S. wolfei was inhibited by high levels of organic acid anions. The activity of acetate-using methanogens is important for the syntrophic degradation of fatty acids when high levels of acetate are present.
Membrane Association and Multimerization of TcpT, the Cognate ATPase Ortholog of the Vibrio cholerae Toxin-Coregulated-Pilus Biogenesis Apparatus

ABSTRACT The toxin-coregulated pilus (TCP) is one of the major virulence factors of Vibrio cholerae. Biogenesis of this type 4 pilus (Tfp) requires a number of structural components encoded by the tcp operon. TcpT, the cognate putative ATPase, is required for TCP biogenesis and all TCP-mediated functions. We studied the stability and localization of TcpT in cells containing in-frame deletions in each of the tcp genes. TcpT was detectable in each of the biogenesis mutants except the ΔtcpT strain. TcpT was localized to the inner membrane (IM) in a TcpR-dependent manner. TcpR is a predicted bitopic inner membrane protein of the TCP biogenesis apparatus. Using metal affinity pull-down experiments, we demonstrated interaction between TcpT and TcpR. Using Escherichia coli as a heterologous system, we investigated direct interaction between TcpR and TcpT. We report that TcpR is sufficient for TcpT IM localization per se; however, stable IM localization of TcpT requires an additional V. cholerae-specific factor(s). A LexA-based two-hybrid system was utilized to define interaction domains of the two proteins. We demonstrate a strong interaction between the cytoplasmic domain of TcpR and the N-terminal 100 amino acid residues of TcpT. We also demonstrated the ability of the C-terminal domain of TcpT to multimerize.
Going Public: UK Companies’ Use of Capital Markets

Public capital markets play an important role in financing the activities of non-financial companies in the United Kingdom, providing them with the main alternative to bank loans and private sources of finance. Although a small number of UK companies issue public bonds and equity, those that do account for a relatively large share of domestic investment and employment. Since the start of the financial crisis in 2007, bond and equity issuance has allowed some large companies to dampen the impact of the contraction in bank lending and the worsening economic outlook on investment and hiring. This suggests that there may be macroeconomic benefits to broadening access to public capital markets. The Bank has helped support primary corporate bond issuance at times of impaired secondary market functioning since 2009 through its Corporate Bond Secondary Market Scheme.
The Political Economy of Public Expenditures in Agriculture: Applications of Concepts to Mozambique

This paper undertakes an investigation of agricultural public investments in Mozambique, drawing on insights from qualitative field interviews conducted in Mozambique, secondary data analysis and examination of the existing empirical literature, and by situating these insights within a political economy conceptual framework. We explore the driving factors behind the amount and allocation of public funds to agriculture, and behind the differential attention that various types of public investments receive in the process of making decisions on resource allocation. Agricultural public investments are more likely to be made that have two key features: higher attributability to politicians and donors of the output of public spending, and a shorter lag time between expenditures incurred and outputs produced. Evidence on geographical targeting of agricultural public funds corresponds more closely with theories suggesting that resources are used to sway communities opposed to the ruling party, rather than to reward political supporters. Examination of the effect of actors' and organisations' incentives and constraints on resource allocation in agriculture points to the importance of not treating “government,” “the ruling party” and other institutions as monolithic bodies; the paper instead highlights how differentiated interests within seemingly coherent institutions drive what gets public expenditure attention in the agricultural sector.
Environmental Impact, Export Intensity, and Productivity Interactions: An Empirical Index Analysis of the Agri‐Food Industry in Spain

Recent studies have focused on how exports affect environmental performance or vice versa, while others have concentrated on the productivity of export-oriented firms. The objective of the present paper is to provide a simultaneous analysis on the aforementioned relationships. The approach followed is a composite equation model in which export performance and productivity components, including an environmental indicator, are endogenously determined, taking as reference exporting firms of the food industry in Southeast Spain, for the period 1994–2006. The results show positive interactions among export intensity, firm efficiency, and environmental productivity, also suggesting that the consideration of endogeneity may enhance the findings of analyses on these issues. Des etudes recentes se sont concentrees sur les effets des exportations sur la performance environnementale ou vice-versa, tandis que d’autres se sont concentrees sur la productivite des entreprises a vocation exportatrice. Le present article vise a fournir une analyse simultanee des liens precites. Nous avons utilise un modele aequations multiples dans lequel les elements lies a la performance des exportations et a la productivite, y compris un indicateur environnemental, sont determines de facon endogene, en prenant comme reference des entreprises agroalimentaires a vocation exportatrice situees dans le sud-est de l’Espagne, durant la periode de 1994 a 2006. Les resultats montrent des interactions positives entre l’intensite des exportations, l’efficacite des entreprises et la productivite environnementale, ce qui autorise a penser que l’endogeneite pourrait ameliorer les resultats des analyses sur ces points.
Further Studies on Zero-Aliasing Space Compression Based on Graph Theory

The design of space-efficient support hardware for built-in self-testing (BIST) is of great significance in the realization of present day very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits and systems, particularly in the context of design paradigm shift from system-onboard to system-on-chip (SOC). This paper revisits the problem of designing zero-aliasing space compression hardware in relation to embedded cores-based SOC for single stuck-line faults in particular, extending the well-known concepts of switching theory, and of incompatibility relation to generate maximal compatibility classes (MCCs) utilizing new graph theory concepts, based on optimal generalized sequence mergeability as developed by the authors in earlier works. The paper briefly presents the mathematical basis of selection criteria for merger of an optimal number of outputs of the module under test (MUT) for realizing maximal compaction ratio in the design, along with some experimental results on ISCAS 89 full-scan sequential benchmark circuits, with simulation programs ATALANTA and FSIM.
Interest Guarantees in Banking

Interest guarantees on loans and savings contracts are viewed as financial claims and priced by the no arbitrage principle in continuous time Markov interest models of diffusion type and of Markov chain type. Various forms of loan contracts and guarantees are considered, an important distinction being made between loans with fixed repayments and loans with fixed amortizations. Differential equations are obtained for the values of the guarantees, and some closed form expressions are obtained for standard contracts in certain well structured models.
The basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor CrMYC2 controls the jasmonate-responsive expression of the ORCA genes that regulate alkaloid biosynthesis in Catharanthus roseus.

Jasmonates are plant signalling molecules that play key roles in defence against insects and certain pathogens, among others by controlling the biosynthesis of protective secondary metabolites. In Catharanthus roseus, the AP2/ERF-domain transcription factor ORCA3 controls the jasmonate-responsive expression of several genes encoding enzymes involved in terpenoid indole alkaloid biosynthesis. ORCA3 gene expression is itself induced by jasmonate. The ORCA3 promoter contains an autonomous jasmonate-responsive element (JRE) composed of a quantitative sequence responsible for the high level of expression and a qualitative sequence that acts as an on/off switch in response to methyl-jasmonate (MeJA). Here, we identify the basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor CrMYC2 as the major activator of MeJA-responsive ORCA3 gene expression. The CrMYC2 gene is an immediate-early jasmonate-responsive gene. CrMYC2 binds to the qualitative sequence in the ORCA3 JRE in vitro, and transactivates reporter gene expression via this sequence in transient assays. Knock-down of the CrMYC2 expression level via RNA interference caused a strong reduction in the level of MeJA-responsive ORCA3 mRNA accumulation. In addition, MeJA-responsive expression of the related transcription factor gene ORCA2 was significantly reduced. Our results show that MeJA-responsive expression of alkaloid biosynthesis genes in C. roseus is controlled by a transcription factor cascade consisting of the bHLH protein CrMYC2 regulating ORCA gene expression, and the AP2/ERF-domain transcription factors ORCA2 and ORCA3, which in turn regulate a subset of alkaloid biosynthesis genes.
Promyelocytic leukaemia‐immunoreactive neuronal intranuclear rodlets in the human brain

In a previous study, we demonstrated immunoreactivity of a subset of neuronal intranuclear rodlets (INRs) in the human substantia nigra for promyelocytic leukaemia (PML) protein, the signature protein of PML bodies. In the present study, we extend these observations and describe the ultrastructural features, immunohistochemical staining characteristics, and topographical pattern of distribution of PML‐immunoreactive intranuclear rodlets (PML‐INRs). Consistent with a purported role for PML bodies in nuclear proteolysis and/or transcriptional regulation, PML‐INRs are immunoreactive for components of the ubiquitin–proteasome system, the transcriptional regulator CREB‐binding protein, acetylated histone H4, and the eukaryotic translation initiation factor eIF4E. Immunoelectron microscopy reveals that they all possess a filamentous core and, in some, this is surrounded by a granular shell. We further demonstrate that a proportion of INRs in extranigral sites also show partial immunoreactivity for PML. These observations indicate an intimate association between two neuronal nuclear bodies, PML bodies and INRs. Because both of these structures have been implicated in neurodegenerative disease, PML‐INRs may provide a tool with which to study changes in nuclear substructure in disease.
Chronic Leptin Administration Decreases Fatty Acid Uptake and Fatty Acid Transporters in Rat Skeletal Muscle*

Chronic leptin administration reduces triacylglycerol content in skeletal muscle. We hypothesized that chronic leptin treatment, within physiologic limits, would reduce the fatty acid uptake capacity of red and white skeletal muscle due to a reduction in transport protein expression (fatty acid translocase (FAT/CD36) and plasma membrane-associated fatty acid-binding protein (FABPpm)) at the plasma membrane. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were infused for 2 weeks with leptin (0.5 mg/kg/day) using subcutaneously implanted miniosmotic pumps. Control and pair-fed animals received saline-filled implants. Leptin levels were significantly elevated (∼4-fold; p < 0.001) in treated animals, whereas pair-fed treated animals had reduced serum leptin levels (approximately −2-fold; p < 0.01) relative to controls. Palmitate transport rates into giant sarcolemmal vesicles were reduced following leptin treatment in both red (−45%) and white (−84%) skeletal muscle compared with control and pair-fed animals (p< 0.05). Leptin treatment reduced FAT mRNA (red, −70%,p < 0.001; white, −48%, p < 0.01) and FAT/CD36 protein expression (red, −32%; p < 0.05) in whole muscle homogenates, whereas FABPpm mRNA and protein expression were unaltered. However, in leptin-treated animals plasma membrane fractions of both FAT/CD36 and FABPpm protein expression were significantly reduced in red (−28 and −34%, respectively) and white (−44 and −56%, respectively) muscles (p < 0.05). Across all experimental treatments and muscles, palmitate uptake by giant sarcolemmal vesicles was highly correlated with the plasma membrane FAT/CD36 protein (r = 0.88,p < 0.01) and plasma membrane FABPpm protein (r = 0.94, p < 0.01). These studies provide the first evidence that protein-mediated long chain fatty acid transport is subject to long term regulation by leptin.