Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Some Ethical Issues for Accountants in Antidumping Trade Cases: An Examination of Recent Case Studies with Emphasis on Latin America

A search of the accounting, trade and ethics literature failed to find a single article that discussed the role that accountants play in assisting in the data gathering process of a trade investigation. Yet there are serious ethical issues that need to be addressed. Certain aspects of trade investigations are unethical, whether one takes a utilitarian or rights view of ethics, and accountants play a role in this unethical conduct. This paper looks at those issues and makes recommendations for change. The author calls for the various state and national accounting organizations to closely examine the ethical issues involved when accountants take part in an antidumping investigation and establish guidelines for ethical conduct.
Effizienzbewertung von Städten auf der Grundlage von Data Envelopment Analysis

Efficiency aims among others to achieve with the same effort the maximum benefit. For measuring the efficiency of products and processes there are various economic models. This raises the question, whether and to which extent such models can be used to measure the efficiency of cities. In this context, the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), commonly used in the field of economics production, has been tested to its applicability to cities. The DEA is a nonparametric, deterministic method to measure the efficiency of economic production, in which the relative efficiency of decision units (DMU) is calculated. In the presented investigation, 116 urban municipalities in Germany were taken as DMUs of the DEA. A discussion about possible values to indicate efficiency of the cities in conjunction with first calculation tests led to a model, by which the economic and the ecological point of view is calculated separately by DEA. Hypotheses were established for both perspectives. Central assumption was: In the economic and ecological model we are looking for cities with least input of the resource “land use” and with high economic resp. ecological performance on output side. The selected input and output values are indicators to deliver an image of prospected correlations. The results allowed a ranking related to economic and ecological efficiency of cities as well as an assessment of the proportions of economic and ecological efficiency of the analyzed cities, realised with the aid of a nine-area-matrix (portfolio). The analysis showed that small and middle sized cities with low population, a medium settlement density and land productivity per unit area as well as a high ecological performance will meet the chosen efficiency criteria most likely. Based on the experience with these still very simple models, DEA appears to be an inspiring heuristic instrument for the attempt to draw near to a concept of an efficient city. English Title: Assessment of the efficiency of cities by using Data Envelopment Analysis
Cycloid psychoses--endogenous psychoses which are neither schizophrenic nor manic-depressive.

A group of acute recoverable psychoses is described, which, in the opinion of the author, are neither manic-depressive nor schizophrenic. These cycloid psychoses can be classified into three subgroups—motility psychosis, confusion psychosis and anxiety-elation psychosis. They are all bipolar illnesses in that two contrasting clinical states may occur at different times. In motility psychosis hyperkinesia and akinesia occur but there is no admixture of hyperkinetic and akinetic features as in periodic catatonia. The hyperkinetic movements are reactive and expressive and are carried out in the usual smooth manner. Confusion psychosis is characterized by incoherent thinking. In the excited phase there is pressure of talk and misidentification while in the inhibited phase there is retardation or even stupor associated with ideas of reference and significance. States of anxiety and of elation occur in anxiety elation psychosis. In the states of anxiety ideas of reference occur while in the elated states expansive ideas occur and usually there is a desire to make others happy. The three subgroups are not sharply delimited from each other, so that over lapping clinical pictures occur. These psychoses are associated with a good prognosis. Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate them from schizophrenia. In that case the schizophrenic illness belongs to the author's non-systematic group, i.e., periodic catatonia, schizophasia and affect laden paraphrenia, which has a better prognosis than the systematic group of schizophrenia.
Effect of NKG2D ligand expression on host immune responses

Summary: Natural killer group 2, member D (NKG2D) is an activating receptor present on the surface of natural killer (NK) cells, some NKT cells, CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, γδ T cells, and under certain conditions CD4+ T cells. Present in both humans and mice, this highly conserved receptor binds to a surprisingly diverse family of ligands that are distant relatives of major histocompatibility complex class I molecules. There is increasing evidence that ligand expression can result in both immune activation (tumor clearance, viral immunity, autoimmunity, and transplantation) and immune silencing (tumor evasion). In this review, we describe this family of NKG2D ligands and the various mechanisms that control their expression in stressed and normal cells. We also discuss the host response to both membrane‐bound and secreted NKG2D ligands and summarize the models proposed to explain the consequences of this differential expression.
Plural and hybrid environmental values: a discourse analysis of the wind energy conflict in Australia and the United Kingdom

Wind energy has divided environmentalists. To understand why, disparate groups from Victoria, Australia and the United Kingdom are characterised as discourse coalitions, and their views and arguments are digested into compelling storylines. Drawing on the literature that explains environmental conflicts in terms of contrasting values, a discourse analysis approach is used to identify and define the hybrid and plural values held by the groups within wind energy discourse coalitions. Importantly for future policy development, influences and views that motivate groups to participate in policy and project assessment are identified, the current battles over facts between coalitions are analysed, and the present ignorance of or preference for certain views and types of values are shown as hindering the policy making process.
Fast and Accurate Simulation of Novel Millimeter-Wave Circuits Based on Commercial Software Package

The accuracy of an Eigenmode analysis for characterizing the propagation and attenuation behavior of periodic structures has been theoretically verified in [1] and [2]. When combined with full-wave simulation, one can further completely and efficiently solve periodic multimode structures and devices. In this work, a set of virtual experiments is conducted to highlight the efficiency and versatility of both solvers in characterizing a set of basic microwave devices. This was demonstrated during the IMS2012 Student Design Competition. On the other hand, the quest to bridge the gap between optical and microwave frequencies has resulted in an unprecedented growth in millimeter-wave frequencies applications. This growth is paralleled by an increase in the complexity of circuit design, owed in part to the miniaturization and high-density integration that is typical of millimeter-wave frequency circuits. This complexity necessitates the concurrent use of diverse modeling and simulation techniques to enhance the accuracy of circuit characterization.
Selective depletion of CD14+ CD16+ monocytes by glucocorticoid therapy

Glucocorticoids (GC) are potent anti‐inflammatory and immunosuppressive agents that act on many cells of the body, including monocytes. Here we show that a 5‐day course of high dose GC therapy differentially affected the CD14++ and the CD14+ CD16+ monocyte subpopulations in 10 patients treated for multiple sclerosis. While the classical (CD14++) monocytes exhibited a substantial increase from 495 ± 132 to 755 ± 337 cells/μl, the CD14+ CD16+ monocytes responded with a pronounced decrease from 36 ± 15 to 2 ± 3 cells/μl (P < 0.001). In 4/10 patients the CD14+ CD16+ monocytes fell below detection limits (< 0.2 cells/μl). This observation was confirmed when the CD14+ CD16+ monocytes were identified by virtue of their low CD33 expression as these cells decreased as well. After discontinuation of GC therapy the CD14+ CD16+ monocytes reappeared and reached normal levels after 1 week. The profound depletion of CD14+ CD16+ monocytes by GC as described here is a novel effect of GC action in vivo and may contribute to GC‐mediated immunosuppression. Determination of the number of this monocyte subset may also serve to monitor the effectiveness of GC therapy in patients requiring immunosuppressive treatment.
Political participation and democracy in Britain

Preface List of figures, tables and charts Part I. Theories and Methods: 1. Participation and democracy 2. The study of participation and its political context Part II. Patterns and Pathways: 3. Patterns of political participation 4. Individual resources 5. Group resources 6. Economic location 7. Personal factors 8. Political outlooks 9. Party and values 10. Who are the political activists Part III. Issues and Actions: 11. Agendas and political action 12. Do participants get what they want? The costs and benefits of participation 13. Learning from political participation Part IV. The Local Process: 14. The local political scene 15. Local participation 16. Local elites, activists and agendas 17. Participation and the making of the local agendas 18. The quality of local participation Part V. Conclusions: 19. Participation and democracy in Britain Appendices Bibliography.
RGB-Depth feature for 3D human activity recognition

We study the problem of human activity recognition from RGB-Depth (RGBD) sensors when the skeletons are not available. The skeleton tracking in Kinect SDK works well when the human subject is facing the camera and there are no occlusions. In surveillance or nursing home monitoring scenarios, however, the camera is usually mounted higher than human subjects, and there may be occlusions. The interest-point based approach is widely used in RGB based activity recognition, it can be used in both RGB and depth channels. Whether we should extract interest points independently of each channel or extract interest points from only one of the channels is discussed in this paper. The goal of this paper is to compare the performances of different methods of extracting interest points. In addition, we have developed a depth map-based descriptor and built an RGBD dataset, called RGBD-SAR, for senior activity recognition. We show that the best performance is achieved when we extract interest points solely from RGB channels, and combine the RGB-based descriptors with the depth map-based descriptors. We also present a baseline performance of the RGBD-SAR dataset.
Tissue-Engineered Axially Vascularized Contractile Skeletal Muscle

Background: As tissue-engineered muscle constructs increase in scale, their size is limited by the need for a vascular supply. In this work, the authors demonstrate a method of producing three-dimensional contractile skeletal muscles in vivo by incorporating an axial vascular pedicle. Methods: Primary myoblast cultures were generated from adult F344 rat soleus muscle. The cells were suspended in a fibrinogen hydrogel contained within cylindrical silicone chambers, and situated around the femoral vessels in isogeneic adult recipient rats. The constructs were allowed to incubate in vivo for 3 weeks, at which point they were explanted and subjected to isometric force measurements and histologic evaluation. Results: The resulting three-dimensional engineered skeletal muscle constructs produced longitudinal contractile force when electrically stimulated. Length-tension, force-voltage, and force-frequency relationships were similar to those found in developing skeletal muscle. Desmin staining demonstrated that individual myoblasts had undergone fusion to form multinucleated myotubes. Von Willebrand staining showed that the local environment within the chamber was richly angiogenic, and capillaries had grown into and throughout the constructs from the femoral artery and vein. Conclusions: Three-dimensional, vascularized skeletal muscle can be engineered in vivo. The resulting tissues have histologic and functional properties consistent with native skeletal muscle.
A 140-Mb/s to 1.82-Gb/s Continuous-Rate Embedded Clock Receiver for Flat-Panel Displays

A wide-range fast-locking embedded clock receiver, which can provide a continuous data rate of 140 Mb/s to 1.82 Gb/s in a 0.25-mum CMOS process, is presented. A fast lock time of 7.5 mus and a small root-mean-square jitter of 15 ps are achieved by using the proposed frequency-band selection and frequency acquisition schemes, as well as a simple linear-phase detector. The implemented embedded clock receiver occupies 2.00 mm2 and consumes currents of 44 and 137 mA at 140 Mb/s and 1.82 Gb/s, respectively, including input/output currents.
Okun's Law Revisited

In the light of modern theoretical studies, the negative relationship between output and unemployment may take a nonlinear form, in the sense that changes in output can cause asymmetric changes in the unemployment rate. A regime-dependent specification of Okun's law, where the inverse relationship between cyclical unemployment and cyclical GDP is allowed to differ across recessions and expansions, is estimated for the US economy. Using both the Hodrick-Prescott filter and a bivariate structural time series model to isolate the cyclical component of the variables of interest, the nonlinear specification is highly significant when tested against the linear alternative independently of the method used for extracting the cycle of unemployment and GDP. The estimation results imply that the contemporaneous effect of growth on unemployment is asymmetric and significantly higher in recessions than in expansions, and shocks to unemployment tend to be more persistent in the expansionary regime. Copyright 2003 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Life cycle greenhouse gas impacts of ethanol, biomethane and limonene production from citrus waste

The production of biofuel from cellulosic residues can have both environmental and financial benefits. A particular benefit is that it can alleviate competition for land conventionally used for food and feed production. In this research, we investigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the production of ethanol, biomethane, limonene and digestate from citrus waste, a byproduct of the citrus processing industry. The study represents the first life cycle-based evaluations of citrus waste biorefineries. Two biorefinery configurations are studied—a large biorefinery that converts citrus waste into ethanol, biomethane, limonene and digestate, and a small biorefinery that converts citrus waste into biomethane, limonene and digestate. Ethanol is assumed to be used as E85, displacing gasoline as a light-duty vehicle fuel; biomethane displaces natural gas for electricity generation, limonene displaces acetone in solvents, and digestate from the anaerobic digestion process displaces synthetic fertilizer. System expansion and two allocation methods (energy, market value) are considered to determine emissions of co-products. Considerable GHG reductions would be achieved by producing and utilizing the citrus waste-based products in place of the petroleum-based or other non-renewable products. For the large biorefinery, ethanol used as E85 in light-duty vehicles results in a 134% reduction in GHG emissions compared to gasoline-fueled vehicles when applying a system expansion approach. For the small biorefinery, when electricity is generated from biomethane rather than natural gas, GHG emissions are reduced by 77% when applying system expansion. The life cycle GHG emissions vary substantially depending upon biomethane leakage rate, feedstock GHG emissions and the method to determine emissions assigned to co-products. Among the process design parameters, the biomethane leakage rate is critical, and the ethanol produced in the large biorefinery would not meet EISA’s requirements for cellulosic biofuel if the leakage rate is higher than 9.7%. For the small biorefinery, there are no GHG emission benefits in the production of biomethane if the leakage rate is higher than 11.5%. Compared to system expansion, the use of energy and market value allocation methods generally results in higher estimates of GHG emissions for the primary biorefinery products (i.e., smaller reductions in emissions compared to reference systems).
Phylogenomic analyses support the monophyly of Excavata and resolve relationships among eukaryotic “supergroups”

Nearly all of eukaryotic diversity has been classified into 6 suprakingdom-level groups (supergroups) based on molecular and morphological/cell-biological evidence; these are Opisthokonta, Amoebozoa, Archaeplastida, Rhizaria, Chromalveolata, and Excavata. However, molecular phylogeny has not provided clear evidence that either Chromalveolata or Excavata is monophyletic, nor has it resolved the relationships among the supergroups. To establish the affinities of Excavata, which contains parasites of global importance and organisms regarded previously as primitive eukaryotes, we conducted a phylogenomic analysis of a dataset of 143 proteins and 48 taxa, including 19 excavates. Previous phylogenomic studies have not included all major subgroups of Excavata, and thus have not definitively addressed their interrelationships. The enigmatic flagellate Andalucia is sister to typical jakobids. Jakobids (including Andalucia), Euglenozoa and Heterolobosea form a major clade that we name Discoba. Analyses of the complete dataset group Discoba with the mitochondrion-lacking excavates or “metamonads” (diplomonads, parabasalids, and Preaxostyla), but not with the final excavate group, Malawimonas. This separation likely results from a long-branch attraction artifact. Gradual removal of rapidly-evolving taxa from the dataset leads to moderate bootstrap support (69%) for the monophyly of all Excavata, and 90% support once all metamonads are removed. Most importantly, Excavata robustly emerges between unikonts (Amoebozoa + Opisthokonta) and “megagrouping” of Archaeplastida, Rhizaria, and chromalveolates. Our analyses indicate that Excavata forms a monophyletic suprakingdom-level group that is one of the 3 primary divisions within eukaryotes, along with unikonts and a megagroup of Archaeplastida, Rhizaria, and the chromalveolate lineages.
Assignment of functional domains involved in ADP-ribosylation and B-oligomer binding within the carboxyl terminus of the S1 subunit of pertussis toxin

The roles of the carboxyl terminus of the S1 subunit (composed of 235 amino acids) of pertussis toxin in the ADP-ribosylation of transducin (Gt) and in B-oligomer binding were defined by analysis of two carboxyl-terminal deletion mutants of the recombinant S1 (rS1) subunit: C204, which is composed of amino acids 1 through 204 of S1, and C219, which is composed of amino acids 1 through 219 of S1. C204 was expressed in Escherichia coli as a stable, soluble peptide that had an apparent molecular mass of 23.4 kDa. In a linear velocity assay, the specific activity of C180 was 2% and that of C204 was 80% of the activity displayed by rS1 in catalyzing the ADP-ribosylation of Gt. In addition, C204 possessed catalytic efficiencies (kcat/Km) that were 110% at variable Gt concentrations and 40% at variable NAD concentrations of those reported for rS1. These data showed that the catalytic activity of C204 approached the activity of S1. C204 and C219 were unable to associate with the B oligomer under conditions which promoted association of rS1 with the B oligomer. Consistent with these results, mixtures of C204 or C219 with the B oligomer did not elicit a clustering phenotype in CHO cells, whereas rS1 which had associated with the B oligomer was as cytotoxic as native pertussis toxin. These data indicate that residues between 219 and 235 are important in the association of the S1 subunit with the B oligomer. These data allow the assignment of functional regions to the carboxyl terminus of S1. Residues 195 to 204 are required for optimal ADP-ribosyltransferase activity, residues 205 to 219 link the catalytic region of S1 and a B-oligomer-binding region of S1, and residues 220 to 235 are required for association of S1 with the B oligomer.
Stewart–Bluefarb syndrome: A case report with angiographic findings

Acroangiodermatitis is a group of benign, angioproliferative cutaneous disease caused by chronic venous insufficiency, acquired or congenital arteriovenous shunts and limb paralysis. Stewart–Bluefarb syndrome is the type of acroangiodermatitis which is associated with a congenital arteriovenous malformation. This is a rare syndrome characterized by cutaneous kaposiform lesions that usually onset at the second decade. In this report, a case of acroangiodermatitis associated with a congenital arteriovenous malformation, which has been diagnosed after 40 years, is described.
The Cyclic Behavior of the National Office Market

A review of the post WWII data on national office building construction and vacancy, reveals a recurrent ten-twelve year cycle. Specifying and estimating a structural econometric model for these series leads to several conclusions about this commercial real estate sector. First, the office market appears to "clear" quite slowly, and long-run expectations play an important role in market behavior. Second, supply is definitely more responsive to market conditions than demand. Finally, a six-year forecast suggests that the current over-supply in the market will not go away as fast as in the past. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.
Effects of platelet-derived growth factor-BB on the metabolic function and morphologic features of equine tendon in explant culture.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of recombinant human platelet-derived growth factor-BB (rhPDGF-BB) on the metabolic function and morphologic features of equine superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT) in explant culture. Animals-6 euthanized horses (2 to 5 years old). METHODS Forelimb SDFT explants were cultured for 6 days as untreated control specimens or treated with rhPDGF-BB (1, 10, 50, or 100 ng/mL of medium). Treatment effects on explant gene expression were evaluated via real-time PCR analysis of collagen type I, collagen type III, PDGF-A, and PDGF-B mRNA. Explants were assayed for total collagen, glycosaminoglycan, and DNA content; histologic changes were assessed via H and E staining and immunohistochemical localization of collagen types I and III. RESULTS No morphologic or proliferative changes were detected in tendon explant sections. After high-dose rhPDGF-BB treatment, gene expression of collagen types I and III was increased and decreased, respectively. Expression of PDGF-A and PDGF-B mRNA was significantly increased at 24 hours, but later decreased to have few or negative autoinductive effects. Although PDGF gene expression waned after 48 hours of culture, collagen type I gene expression was significantly increased at 48 hours and reached peak value on day 6. Glycosaminoglycan and DNA content of explants were unchanged with rhPDGF-BB treatment. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE Results suggest that rhPDGF-BB use may be of benefit in the repair of equine tendon, particularly through induction of collagen type I mRNA. Positive autoinductive effects of PDGF-BB in equine SDFT explants were detected early following culture medium supplementation, but these diminished with time.