Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Employment, Labour Utilization and Procyclical Labour Productivity

The paper provides a theoretical and empirical framework to analyze the effects of change in various labor-cost parameters on employment and labor utilization. By accounting for overtime work, a nonlinear cost scheme is obtained that can serve as an explanation of procyclic al movements in labor productivity. A generalized Leontief system, based on an onlinear labor-cost scheme, is estimated for employment, average hours worked, and capital input. The empirical evidence is consistent with the stylized fact of procyclical labor productivity. A reduction of standard hours leads to a loss in employment. Copyright 1988 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG
CNS Infections in Patients With Cancer

Purpose of Review: This article provides a practical clinical approach to potential CNS infections in patients with cancer, discusses problematic presentations of posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome and immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome, and includes specific testing and treatment recommendations for bacterial meningitis, invasive fungal infections, and opportunistic viral infections. Recent Findings: The major deficits predisposing patients with cancer to CNS infection are neutropenia, barrier disruption, B-lymphocyte or immunoglobulin deficiency, and impaired T lymphocyte–mediated immunity. Evolving patterns of drug resistance and prophylactic antimicrobial regimens have altered the timing and range of organisms causing infections. Increasingly intensive immunosuppression has made new groups of patients vulnerable to infections such as progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. New MRI sequences offer the potential to diagnose such infections earlier, at a stage when they are more treatable. Summary: Despite improved prophylactic and therapeutic antibiotic regimens, CNS infections remain an important source of morbidity and mortality among several cancer patient groups, particularly those patients undergoing craniotomy and those with hematologic malignancies receiving either hematopoietic cell transplantation or other intensive chemotherapy regimens.
UN MODELO ORGÁNICO DEL PROCESO DE DIRECCIÓN ESTRATÉGICA DE LA EMPRESA FAMILIAR

En este trabajo planteamos un modelo organico del proceso de direccion estrategica de la empresa familiar. A partir de la revision de modelos previos, proponemos una perspectiva organica centrada en las dimensiones de organizacion, entorno, estrategia y resultado. El modelo propuesto incide en la co-evolucion entre las dimensiones y los sistemas familiar y empresarial, en los aspectos organizativos y dinamicos del proceso estrategico y en la conjuncion de las estrategias deliberadas y emergentes. En el trabajo establecemos diversas aplicaciones del modelo en el contexto actual y orientaciones para futuras investigaciones.
Intravascular volume depletion in a 24-hour porcine model of intra-abdominal hypertension.

BACKGROUND The purpose of the study was to examine hemodynamic parameters and intravascular volume in a porcine model in the presence of intra-abdominal hypertension (IAH) lasting for 24 hours. METHODS Twelve pigs (52.5 +/- 4.9 kg) were studied over a period of 24 hours. In six animals, the intra-abdominal pressure was increased to 30 mm Hg via carbon dioxide-pneumoperitoneum. The others served as controls. Using the double-indicator dilution technique, intrathoracic blood volume (ITBV), total circulating blood volume, and cardiac output (CO) were measured. Standard parameters (e.g., central venous pressure [CVP]), were also recorded. RESULTS In the presence of IAH, ITBV and total circulating blood volume were significantly reduced to 55% and 67% of control values. CO decreased to 27% and CVP increased fourfold. CONCLUSION IAH leads to significant intravascular volume depletion that is not reflected by the CVP. Assessment of CO and ITBV in the presence of a critically increased intra-abdominal pressure is therefore recommended.
Adjustment Dynamics under Dual Exchange Rates

The erratic movement of capital across national borders, often a result of foreign exchange speculation, has contributed a great deal to the instability of the international economy and the fall of the Bretton Woods system. In place of the pegged exchange rate system, many countries have adopted a flexible rate regime but even more have established a so called dual rate system,1 under which the markets for current and capital account transactions are separated, and the price in the former market, called the commercial exchange rate, is often fixed, while that in the latter market, called the financial exchange rate, is allowed to adjust freely.2 By so doing it is hoped that the current account will be immune from the irregular international capital movements and the resultant volatility }f the exchange rate.3 The existing literature on the regime of dual exchange rates had mainly focused on the problem of its policy effects and insulation function [Argy and Porter (1972), Dornbusch (1976a), Marion (1981), Flood and Marion (1982)], and its relative advantages or dis advantages compared with other methods of capital mobility control [Fleming (1974),
Global production networks and the changing geography of innovation systems. Implications for developing countries

The paper addresses disruptive changes that globalization imposes on the geography of innovation systems, and identifies potential benefits that developing countries could reap from international linkages. The analysis is centered on three propositions. First, developing countries need to blend diverse international and domestic sources of knowledge to compensate for initially weak national production and innovation systems. Second, a greater variety of international knowledge linkages is possible, as globalization reduces the spatial stickiness of innovation. Third, globalization has culminated in an important organizational innovation: the spread of global production networks (GPN) combines concentrated dispersion with systemic integration, creating new opportunities for international knowledge diffusion. We argue that GPN provide firms and industrial districts in developing countries with new opportunities for reverse knowledge outsourcing. We explore resultant challenges that define the need for public policy response, define the new agenda for industrial upgrading, and discuss what types of policies and support institutions may help to reap the benefits from network participation.
The Audacity of Justice: Recession, Redundancy, Rights and Legal Aid

The 2008 recession presents a double challenge to legal aid. Unemployment extends legal aid eligibility. It is also associated with increased vulnerability to problems involving legal rights, feeding demand for legal services. Job loss, as distinct from unemployment, might be expected to increase vulnerability further still. In this paper, we set out findings from a first analysis of the relationship between job loss and the experience of rights problems. In the context of the current recession, we set out the likely scale of the recession's impact on the incidence of rights problems and demand for legal (and legal aid) services.
Toward Better ICU Use at the End of Life.

Argument Against ICU Care at the End of Life Some argue ICU admission at the end of life should be a “never” event. Three reasons support this argument. First, ICU care is characterized by the aggressive use of often invasive technology designed to rescue seriously ill patients from death. In contrast, high-quality end-oflife care provides patients with a “good death,” generally conceived as one without pain or unwanted interventions in the loving care of family and friends. Under this model, the former appears to impede the latter. Second, 1 in 5 US residents receive ICU care at the end of life,1 substantially contributing to the statistic that more than a quarter of Medicare dollars are spent on patients during the last year of life.2 Third, this rate of ICU use in the United States is higher than in many other countries, with no clear benefit in terms of life expectancy.3 Thus, ICU care in the United States at the end of life appears unwanted, expensive, and futile.
The Demand for Life Insurance in Mexico and The United States: A Comparative Study

This study compares the demand for life insurance in Mexico with that in the United States. It provides a brief historical perspective on the growth of life insurance purchases in the two countries and employs regression analysis to estimate life insurance demand functions. The principal findings are that age, education, and level of income affect the demand for life insurance and that the income elasticity of demand for life insurance is much higher in Mexico than in the United States.
Occurrence of the regulatory nucleotides ppGpp and pppGpp following induction of the stringent response in staphylococci

The stringent response in Escherichia coli and many other organisms is regulated by the nucleotides ppGpp and pppGpp. We show here for the first time that at least six staphylococcal species also synthesize ppGpp and pppGpp upon induction of the stringent response by mupirocin. Spots corresponding to ppGpp and pppGpp on thin-layer chromatograms suggest that pppGpp is the principal regulatory nucleotide synthesized by staphylococci in response to mupirocin, rather than ppGpp as in E. coli.
On the Dual Stability of a von Neumann Facet and the Inefficacy of Temporary Fiscal Policy

This study establishes two main results in a dynamic general equilibrium model. The first is to demonstrate the dual Liapounov stability of a von Neumann facet without the restrictive assumptions on the structure of underlying technologies adopted commonly in the optimal growth literature. The second is to demonstrate that a temporary change in fiscal policy has almost no effect on present and future consumption. While such a result has been discussed in the context of permanent income hypothesis, in this study it is proved in the dynamic general equilibrium framework under a set of basic assumptions of general equilibrium theory.
Molecular mechanism of β‐adrenergic receptor blockers with intrinsic sympathomimetic activity

β‐Adrenergic receptor (βAR) blocking agents with intrinsic sympathomimetic activity (ISA) can induce modest increases in βAR‐stimulated activity, such as rate and force of contraction in cardiac tissue. The molecular basis for this activity has been elusive. Previous studies have suggested that these compounds do not stimulate cyclic AMP (cAMP) formation even though activation of adenylate cyclase is the generally accepted mechanism for βAR promotion of target cell response. In the current studies, we show that several βAR antagonists with ISA (dichloroisoproterenol, pindolol, and celiprolol) stimulate cAMP accumulation five‐, two‐, and threefold, respectively, in S49 lymphoma cells, but only if cells are simultaneously incubated with the diter‐pene forskolin. The KI values observed for inhibition of isoproterenol‐stimulated cAMP accumulation or of βAR ([125I]iodocyanopindolol) binding for each of the β blockers with ISA were comparable in magnitude to their respective EC50 values for forskolin‐potentiated cAMP accumulation. The forskolin‐potentiated responses of these compounds were abolished by the βAR‐antagonist propranolol. These results indicate that the ISA of β‐blocking drugs most likely results from a modest βAR‐mediated stimulation of adenylate cyclase activity. The results further suggest that treatment of target cells with forskolin provides a means to define partial agonism at receptors that are linked to stimulation of adenylate cyclase. —Jasper, J. R. ; Michel, M. C. ; Insel, M. C. Molecular mechanism of β‐adrenergic receptor blockers with intrinsic sympathomimetic activity. FASEB J. 2: 2891‐2894; 1988.
THE IMPACT OF INVESTMENT POLICY ON REGIONAL ECONOMIC PATTERNS IN CHINA

Investment policy seeks to alter the structural conditions of a country's economy to create new regional patterns for national economic development. Since the 1979 Open Door policy in China, there have been four distinct periods of investment policy reform. These periods are the Initial Stage, Adjustment Stage, Framework Establishment Stage and Stage for Development of Central-Western China. During each period, the policy implemented created new structural conditions for economic resources and shaped regional economic patterns. This paper discusses the impact of investment policy on regional economic patterns by analyzing alterations in investor composition, industrial structure and investment spatial distribution during each period respectively.
Local Holder exponent analysis of heart rate variability in preterm infants

Heart rate variability (HRV) displays scale-invariant fractal properties. Recent studies have revealed multifractal properties in the healthy human HRV, which could be characterized by singularities with various strength of local Holder exponents embedded in HRV. In this paper, HRV time series from preterm infants, whose autonomic nervous system undergoes dramatic development, were collected longitudinally. Changes in fractality/multifractality of those HRV time series as the postmenstrual age were examined in order to see if they could quantify development of the autonomic nervous system. Temporal structure of the singularities at several representative time scales was also analyzed to show that intersingular event intervals could be well described by "power law distribution", and the singular events appeared with age-dependent long-range correlation in its strength. Detailed analyses suggested that fractality and multifractality of HRV, respectively, could quantify the development of the respiratory center and the parasympathetic nervous system in the preterm infants. The results obtained in this study might be beneficial for detecting occurrences of life threatening singular events such as big apnea in preterm infants.
Bacterial DNA ligases

DNA ligases join breaks in the phosphodiester backbone of DNA molecules and are used in many essential reactions within the cell. All DNA ligases follow the same reaction mechanism, but they may use either ATP or NAD+ as a cofactor. All Bacteria (eubacteria) contain NAD+‐dependent DNA ligases, and the uniqueness of these enzymes to Bacteria makes them an attractive target for novel antibiotics. In addition to their NAD+‐dependent enzymes, some Bacteria contain genes for putative ATP‐dependent DNA ligases. The requirement for these different isozymes in Bacteria is unknown, but may be related to their utilization in different aspects of DNA metabolism. The putative ATP‐dependent DNA ligases found in Bacteria are most closely related to proteins from Archaea and viruses. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that all NAD+‐dependent DNA ligases are closely related, but the ATP‐dependent enzymes have been acquired by Bacterial genomes on a number of separate occasions.
Fertility economy and household formation in England over three centuries

This paper using pretransitional England as a case-study assesses long term trends in family organization and associated fertility in a society in which parity-dependent fertility control was for the most part absent. It also considers the means by which institutions especially those to do with labor organizations and family welfare mediated between trends in real incomes and completed family sizes. The study concludes that the distinctiveness of the English experience stems from the culturally specific nature of the rules of household formation that gave changes in marriage age and incidence a fundamental role in determining the markedly dynamic quality of fertility before the late nineteenth century. It is found that "these household formation rules appear not to have been much altered by the growth of agrarian and industrial capitalism although they did undermine the capacity of the demographic system to act homeostatically. " (summary in FRE SPA)
Materialized view maintenance in columnar storage for massive data analysis

Data-intensive computing becomes a buzz word nowadays, where constant data for current operational processing and historical data for massive analysis are often separated into two systems. How to keep the historical data for analysis (often in a materialized view manner) consistent with their data sources (often in the operational databases) is the main problem to be solved imperatively. In this paper, we proposed a novel method for data consistency maintenance between the data located in the two systems. Two basic operators (i.e., insertion and deletion) for consistency maintenance are provided as well as their implementations in the new environment of column-oriented storage on large-scale data analysis platform for efficient processing. Two data consistency models (i.e., eventual consistency model and timeline-based consistency model) are proposed to tradeoff data consistency for processing efficiency. Our extensive experimental evaluation also proves the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed methods.
Credit union regulation and the financial services authority: less is more, but better!

Purpose – The UK's financial watchdog, The financial services authority (FSA) took over prudential regulation and control of credit unions on 2nd July 2002. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of the new regulatory framework and its impact on the continued poor perception of credit unions among users of financial services products. It also aims to assess what the future may hold for the direction of the UK credit union sector.Design/methodology/approach – An assessment is made of the impact of the new regulatory framework and its impact on the continued poor perception of credit unions among users of financial services products. Also, an assessment is made of what the future may hold for the direction of the UK credit union sector.Findings – The paper finds that credit union membership is growing, as are members’ deposits and loans, however at the same time the numbers of individual credit unions are falling. Overall, with supervision and regulation passing to the FSA, the outlook for credit.
Choosing between bonds and equities under long-term risk constraints

A portfolio selection model is proposed for use under long-term risk constraints, when risk is defined as the probability that the actual return will under-perform a target portfolio return in a risk-observing period. Guidelines are provided as to how to apply the model to actual practice. In the proposed model, a rate function is introduced that plays an important role in the large deviation principle and is necessary in formulating the mathematical programming. Numerical examples demonstrate that investors with low long-term risk tolerance should select bonds over equities when annual equity returns remain between 7 and 8%. Examples also show that the effect of higher moments is minor, but cannot be ignored.
Multi-breath dry powder inhaler for delivery of cohesive powders in the treatment of bronchiectasis

Abstract A series of co-engineered macrolide–mannitol particles were successfully prepared using azithromycin (AZ) as a model drug. The formulation was designed to target local inflammation and bacterial colonization, via the macrolide component, while the mannitol acted as mucolytic and taste-masking agent. The engineered particles were evaluated in terms of their physico-chemical properties and aerosol performance when delivered via a novel high-payload dry powder Orbital™ inhaler device that operates via multiple inhalation manoeuvres. All formulations prepared were of suitable size for inhalation drug delivery and contained a mixture of amorphous AZ with crystalline mannitol. A co-spray dried formulation containing 200 mg of 50:50 w/w AZ: mannitol had 57.6% ± 7.6% delivery efficiency with a fine particle fraction (≤6.8 µm) of the emitted aerosol cloud being 80.4% ± 1.1%, with minimal throat deposition (5.3 ± 0.9%). Subsequently, it can be concluded that the use of this device in combination with the co-engineered macrolide–mannitol therapy may provide a means of treating bronchiectasis.
Cluster-Based Cooperative Spectrum Sensing Assignment Strategy for Heterogeneous Cognitive Radio Network

Cognitive radio (CR) is proposed as an efficient way to address the issue of spectrum shortage and underutilization, in which cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is used to enhance sensing performance. One of the most fundamental problems of CSS is how to appropriately assign the secondary users (SUs) to sense the primary user (PU) channels. In this paper, we study the CSS problem under a more practical scenario where we take the heterogeneous characteristics of both SUs and PU channels into consideration. With the objective to maximize the achievable throughput for SUs, we propose a cluster-based CSS to obtain a proper assignment policy, in which all the SUs in the same cluster cooperate in sensing the same set of PU channels. Moreover, the cluster-based CSS problem is formulated as a Maximum-Weight one-sided Biclique (MWB) problem. We prove that the MWB problem is NP-complete, and a greedy heuristic algorithm with polynomial computational complexity is developed to find the suboptimal assignment policy. Evaluation results show that our proposed greedy algorithm can achieve a close-to-optimal solution with far less complexity.
How old is the Hawaiian biota? Geology and phylogeny suggest recent divergence

This study quantifies long–term landscape changes in the Hawaiian archipelago relating to dispersal, speciation and extinction. Accounting for volcano growth, subsidence and erosion, we modelled the elevations of islands at time intervals of 0.5 Myr for the last 32 Myr; we also assessed the variation in the spacing of volcanoes during this period. The size, spacing and total number of volcanic islands have varied greatly over time, with the current landscape of large, closely spaced islands preceded by a period with smaller, more distantly spaced islands. Considering associated changes in rates of dispersal and speciation, much of the present species pool is probably the result of recent colonization from outside the archipelago and divergence within contemporary islands, with limited dispersal from older islands. This view is in accordance with abundant phylogenetic studies of Hawaiian organisms that estimate the timing of colonization and divergence within the archipelago. Twelve out of 15 multi–species lineages have diverged within the lifetime of the current high islands (last 5 Myr). Three of these, and an additional seven (mostly single–species) lineages, have colonized the archipelago within this period. The timing of colonization of other lineages remains uncertain.